Why Ewers Could (or not) Be More Successful than Previous Dolphins Backups

The Miami Dolphins are rolling with quarterback Quinn Ewers for at least their Week 16 game against the Cincinnati Bengals and likely the rest of the 2025 NFL season.

Benching Tua Tagovailoa raises a lot of questions about the team’s future plan, both relating to him and head coach Mike McDaniel. However, there are also short-term questions to ask, like: What’s the scouting report on Ewers?

Miami’s seventh-round pick has a gigantic opportunity to prove he can hang in the NFL, if not as a starter, at least as a backup for a long time. Perhaps more importantly, this also gives another data point on evaluating McDaniel.

Ewers will be just the second quarterback drafted with McDaniel in the building to start a game — the other is Skylar Thompson, who was also a seventh-round pick.

One of McDaniel’s biggest mistakes last season was trusting Thompson as the backup quarterback. So, we will look at why Ewers could be or not be as successful as the last time the Dolphins trotted out a seventh-rounder.

Why Ewers Can Be Successful

By far, the biggest thing Ewers has going for him is his familiarity with Miami’s scheme. In college, Ewers played at Texas under Steve Sarkisian, who has been incredibly open about how his and the Dolphins’ offenses are similar.

Like Miami, the Texas offense has a lot of pre-snap motion, RPOs, and throws to spots. The bones of the schemes are quite similar, and so is the overall philosophy from a passing game perspective.

In both schemes, the QB is viewed as a pre-snap conductor, rather than a post-snap creator. The complexity of Miami’s pre-snap operation has been cited as a primary reason why previous backups have failed and why the team is so late to the line of scrimmage.

In theory, Ewers should be significantly better equipped to conduct Miami’s offense than pretty much any quarterback not named Tua. Ewers got a crash course at Texas and has been sitting and learning all season.

From a traits perspective, Ewers’ general strengths line up well with the Dolphins’ passing game philosophy. The Texas product does his best work in the quick game (especially RPOs) and is willing to throw blindly into zones because he was told a receiver will be there.

If there’s an NFL offense Ewers could succeed in, it’s the Dolphins’.

The other element working in Ewers’ favor is expectations. Miami’s other backups were always compared to the best version of Tagovailoa — or at least better than the one we got this season.

Ewers’ bar for success will be lower because of how bad Miami’s passing game has looked since the team beat Buffalo in Week 10.

That probably shouldn’t matter, but it undoubtedly will be a factor when the inevitable Ewers discourse ramps up.

Why Ewers Won’t be Successful

Ultimately, the reasons Ewers might not be successful are incredibly similar to the reasons Thompson wasn’t successful.

Like Thompson, Ewers is a physically limited quarterback. He doesn’t have good mobility, and he’s got below-average arm strength for the position.

He struggled a ton to avoid sacks in college, and he missed a lot of throws because he didn’t have the juice to reach his target. None of that will get easier in the NFL.

Additionally, Ewers’ tape did not show a player who was ready to read NFL defenses at a high level early in his career. He struggled with blitzes and post-snap coverages despite three years of starting experience in the SEC.

Ewers fell to the seventh round because his tape at Texas wasn’t good, and there were serious questions about whether he had enough physical tools to survive at the NFL level.

If he fails, it will be because the NFL game will overwhelm him. You saw flashes of that during his brief appearance against the Browns.

However, he also made a great touch throw to Dee Eskridge on a vertical route. There’s a version of history where Quinn does enough to stick long-term in Miami, unlike Thompson.

It’s just hard to see him as an upgrade from a traits perspective, and as Tua’s downfall has proven, traits matter at quarterback. Perhaps his familiarity and fit within the scheme are enough to overcome that. Either way, we'll learn a lot this weekend against the Bengals.

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