How Can the Dolphins Prove They’re Hard-Nosed?
Credit: Sam Navarro-USA TODAY Sports
As the Miami Dolphins struggled to win anything remotely in the vicinity of a big game over the past few seasons, some serious suspicions must have creeped in within the fanbase. On Tuesday, one of their own spoke to confirm the Dolphins’ worst fears.
“Playing against this team over the past few years, you kind of get a sense of ‘OK, if you get on top of this team, they might fold,'” said Jordan Poyer, who has spent the last seven seasons playing safety for the Buffalo Bills. “There are some teams that are [liable to fold in adversity] — this is just being honest.”
We might have thought it before, but Poyer told us what the NFL thinks: The Dolphins have been soft as of late. The stat everyone points to is how the Dolphins went 1-5 against teams with winning records last season, but we can even see it in how the Phins win games. The formula is to jump on an opponent early, and keep pouring it on. In Mike McDaniel’s two seasons as head coach, there really isn’t a second way for Miami to win games.
The Dolphins showed an ability to overcome adversity exactly once: in Week 2 of 2022. The Baltimore Ravens ran up a 28-7 lead on Miami at halftime, and entered the fourth quarter with a 35-14 lead. You remember the rest, as the comeback was the coming-out party for Miami’s explosive offense. Tyreek Hill caught two touchdown passes combining for 108 yards. The Phins forced a 35-35 tie, went down 38-35 with 2:18 remaining, then Tua Tagovailoa threw a touchdown pass to Jaylen Waddle with 14 seconds left to lift Miami to a 42-38 road win.
Since then, the Dolphins have exactly two wins in games where they were down by two scores. The first was in 2022, when Miami erased a 27-17 deficit against the Detroit Lions to win 31-27. The second was last year’s game against the Carolina Panthers, when Carolina went up 14-0 at the end of the first quarter. The Dolphins scored 35 points before Carolina finally answered back with a too-little, too-late fourth-quarter touchdown.
These two opponents were a combined 1-10 entering those games.
Poyer diagnosed the problem, but the solution is much easier said than done. “It’s really in those moments of adversity… being able to handle them the right way,” Poyer explained. “you’ve got to find a way to compartmentalize and really have that mental capacity to move on.”
How can you shake the reputation of being soft? It’s hard to think of a team that suddenly became hard-nosed, but Miami is going to have to do that to get past a loaded AFC in the playoffs. You can’t fold in tough moments when teams as good as the Buffalo Bills or Houston Texans are decidedly in the second tier of the AFC playoff field. Struggling through adversity is definitely not how the Dolphins are going to power past the Kansas City Chiefs or Cincinnati Bengals.
McDaniel is ready for the challenge. “Poyer is here because of the player he is and the leader he is, and I think he recognizes the leadership opportunity that he has here,” McDaniel said in response to Poyer’s quotes. But after an offseason of turnover, particularly on the defense, the coach notes “Realities are the past, [but don’t] predict the future.”
One thing McDaniel may want to do to change the future for his team is stop abandoning the running game in the instances when his team gets punched in the mouth. Against teams with losing records, Miami averaged 30.4 rushing attempts per game. Remember that comeback win against the Panthers? McDaniel didn’t put his run game on the shelf, he kept trusting it throughout the game. Raheem Mostert rushed 17 times by himself, and the team totaled as many rushing attempts (32) as passing.
In games against winning teams, the Dolphins ran just 20.3 times per game. Sure, when a team is down, they tend to throw more, but abandoning balance in the offense isn’t always helpful, and it sure didn’t help Miami win tough games last year.
But chewing more clock by sticking to the ground game means relying on the defense to get more stops, and that’s where recent veteran additions in Poyer, Jalen Ramsey (who played just 10 games last year), Calais Campbell, and Kendall Fuller come in. All are longtime veterans with extensive track records of playing at a high level.
While Ramsey shrugged off Poyer’s comments (“I don’t really have a reaction to it. I only played him one time when I was on the Dolphins”), he did so in a way that acknowledges the criticism. “[This] year’s team is different than last year’s team in a lot of different ways, including having [Poyer] on the team now,” Ramsey explained.
He also offered a prescription of what they need to do to shake that reputation, and it starts with training camp. “We’ve got to build our identity. We got to go through a lot of things during this camp, a lot of growing pains, hopefully some adversity, maybe even a couple of fights and good things like that to bring us closer.”
To his credit, Poyer isn’t looking to tear his team down, but build them up. Tough love is a thing, and Poyer must believe that Miami has it in them to be a more resilient team. Poyer doesn’t have a ring yet, so it’s hard to believe he’d join the Dolphins if he didn’t think he could help them overcome adversity. What advice can he offer them?
“Look, I don’t care if you give up a first down. I don’t care if you give up a touchdown. It’s the next play. We’ve got to keep playing, it’s a long game left,” explained Poyer when asked about his approach to the mental side of the game. “Those teams that are able to handle those moments… are usually the teams that you see in the playoffs at the end of the season.”
Poyer said what the rest of the league was thinking. Now it’s on him, the coaches, and the rest of the team to adopt that hard-nosed mentality to get a talented team to the next level.
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