What Now for the Dolphins Offense with the Bad Achane News Now Official

The Miami Dolphins indeed will have to make do without star running back De'Von Achane for the rest of the 2026 season, and a rebuilding year that already was difficult isn't going to get any easier.

Achane sustained a torn ACL early in the Dolphins' 24-10 loss against the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday, according to NFL insiders Adam Schefter and Ian Rapoport, putting an end to his fourth NFL season but opening a series of questions, concerns, and maybe second guesses.

The most immediate concern for the Dolphins is what the loss of Achane will do for their offense, an offense that has yet to produce more than 13 points in any game this season.

Achane will be placed on injured reserve at some point this week, at which time the Dolphins likely will be signing another running back to their 53-man roster. That running back more than likely will be one of the two on their practice squad, either Carlos Washington Jr. or Jarquez Hunter, with Hunter looking like a slight favorite because he was a fourth-round draft pick of the L.A. Rams a couple of years ago and the Dolphins did trade for him.

If the Dolphins go outside the organization for their running back replacement, nothing they've done would suggest they would make any kind of play for a big-name veteran.

WHAT THE LOSS MEANS FOR THE OFFENSE

More than likely, the Dolphins will be rolling with Jaylen Wright and Ollie Gordon II as the main running backs moving forward.

But neither player is Achane.

Few running backs are.

Achane wasn't off to a great start in 2026, which wasn't entirely unexpected given the youth and deficiencies on the Dolphins roster, both offense and defense.

But what Achane brought was the constant threat of the big play, whether as a runner or receiver.

That now will be missing from the offense.

The Dolphins don't have a run longer than 17 yards so far this season, but Achane had six runs of 35 yards or more in 2025. Wright's career long since arriving as a fourth-round pick in 2024 is 32 yards (against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers last year) and Gordon's longest run as a rookie last year was 20 yards against Washington.

The Dolphins have struggled with their running game so far in 2026, with no running back — Achane included — averaging more than 3.7 yards per carry and it's quarterback Malik Willis who has saved the day in that area with his scrambling.

The offense has been able to produce a big pass play here and there, including three gains or at least 30 yards in the Kansas City game, and the Dolphins weren't shy about having Willis take shots down the field.

The one touchdown drive against the Chiefs was impressive, but being able to control the ball without an effective running game won't be easy moving forward.

Willis had a season-high nine rushing attempts against Kansas City, some of them scrambles on called pass plays, and it very well might have to take on a bigger role as a runner for the offense to be able to compensate for the loss of Achane.

The receiving corps also should get better as the season progresses with Caleb Douglas and Chris Bell's continued development, but the question is what kind of ceiling the passing game might have for 2026 even at its best.

THE ACHANE INJURY A BAD DEJA VU

The Achane injury came almost exactly one year after the Dolphins lost another dynamic playmaker to injury, referring obviously to the catastrophic knee injury sustained by Tyreek Hill in the Monday night game against the New York Jets last September 30.

Because they still had Achane and Jaylen Waddle, along with Darren Waller, the 2025 Dolphins offense was much better equipped to handle that kind of loss.

The Achane injury also was reminiscent of that 2019 season — yes, another comparison to that year — when the rebuilding Dolphins lost defensive standouts Xavien Howard and Reshad Jones after they had started five and four games, respectively.

Achane was injured on the Dolphins' fifth offensive play at the end of an 11-yard run as he was about to be tackled by safety Alohi Gilman. Achane carried the ball on three of those first five plays and was targeted on a pass on a fourth play.

The injury left the Dolphins short-handed at running back since they had only two active players at the position with Wright out with an injury, though Malik Washington took some snaps and had some carries from the backfield — as he's done from time to time since joining the Dolphins as a sixth-round pick in the 2024 NFL draft.

Without Achane or Willis' stats, Gordon and Washington combined for 46 yards on 19 rushing attempts, an average of 2.4 yards per carry.

That's not going to work.

And suddenly we're looking at the real possibility that it could be Willis who ends up leading the team in rushing, just like quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick did in that 2019 season.

Ideally, Wright or Gordon seizes the opportunity now present with Achane absent and emerges as a bona fide option moving forward (as in 2027 and beyond).

And, of course, this is where some of the second-guessers will jump in here and suggest the Dolphins made a mistake in giving Achane a contract extension and instead should have traded him to get more draft capital to help the rebuilding project.

This would be called playing the results because nobody could have foreseen Achane tearing an ACL in his third game with his new contract, though long-term durability concerns were legit.

We also don't know what kind of trade offers, if any, the Dolphins got for Achane and we also can't forget that he's still very young and it's not like the Dolphins simply could get rid of every front-line player with a tradable contract.

The hope obviously is Achane comes back strong in 2027, and if the worst of this injury is him missing what always was going to be a sacrificed season, then the Dolphins certainly could live with that.

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