The Dolphins are weak at three of the most crucial positions in football - quarterback, edge rusher and cornerback. Where do they start building? We don't have any idea. This is the fun of watching the Dolphins' new regime of general manager Jon-Eric Sullivan and coach Jeff Hafley. This is the excitement of team construction. Usually the offseason frustrates me. It's basically an extended period of yapping. There's no football, so nothing gets settled for months.
The Dolphins, under the guidance of new general manager Jon-Eric Sullivan and new coach Jeff Hafley, have eight picks in the April 23-25 draft - one in the first round (No. 11), one in the second (43), three in the third (75, 87 and 90), one in the fourth (111), one in the fifth (149) and one in the seventh (227).
Washington, 41, has been the defensive line coach at Notre Dame the past four seasons and was switching this year to coach linebackers. He has also been the Fighting Irish's defensive run game coordinator. A defensive tackle in his playing days at Boston College, Washington was linebackers coach at Ohio State from 2019 through 2021 and at Michigan in 2018. He also has previous stops at Cincinnati, BC, Elon and Slippery Rock.
MOBILE, Ala. - Georgia Tech guard Keylan Rutledge can't be missed during Senior Bowl practices. He's the mauler, the beast, the one pounding his opponents into dust. And he's attracted the interest of the Dolphins, a team wanting to get better in the trenches. On Tuesday, Rutledge (6-foot-3, 316 pounds), projected as a mid-round pick, had a few impressive displays of physicality and aggression - including one against SMU's Jeffrey M'Ba, and one against Texas A&M's Scooby Williams. He drove them both to the ground.
"We're going to invest in that position every year if we can," Sullivan said during his introductory news conference. "Now depending on where we are as a football team, it'll be at different values, but we will draft quarterbacks every year, if not every other year because I think you have to. "If you hit on a guy, great. And if not - if you hit on two, you have trade value."
The Miami Dolphins don't yet have their defensive coordinator in place, but a position coach who was under new coach Jeff Hafley in Green Bay will now be joining the staff. The Dolphins are hiring Ryan Downard as defensive backs coach, according to a league source Monday night.
That process will be expedited, according to Hafley, as he made some outside interview rounds Friday. "I think we'll see in the next day or two who the coordinator is," Hafley said on the Rich Eisen Show on Friday. "We're just kind of piecing that together and then, hopefully by the weekend, we'll have all three coordinators in. I feel like we're close. I'll call the defense, but I'll still have a defensive coordinator."
If I was Miami Dolphins new general manager Jon-Eric Sullivan or new coach Jeff Hafley, I wouldn't sign Green Bay Packers backup quarterback Malik Willis to a multi-year free agent contract to be Miami's starter. We'll find out in a matter of weeks what Sullivan, the former Green Bay vice president of player personnel, and Hafley, the former Packers defensive coordinator, think of the athletic, 26-year-old Willis, who is eligible to become a free agent.
Hafley must deal with this organization's mental game before the physical game. Hopefully that's what the new hires at general manager and head coach acknowledge. Hafley, the former Green Bay Packers defensive coordinator, is believed to be here because of his relationship with new general manager Jon-Eric Sullivan. The two worked together in Green Bay for the past two seasons when Sullivan was vice president of player personnel.
Incidentally, Brady's Bills offense just faced Campanile's Jacksonville defense in a playoff game Sunday. Brady, an alumnus of Everglades High in Miramar, has held that role with the Bills full-time for the past two seasons, building off his success when he took over the job in the interim upon the firing of Ken Dorsey, former Miami Hurricanes national championship-winning quarterback, during the 2023 season.
MIAMI GARDENS - I hope Dolphins owner Stephen Ross asked new general manager Jon-Eric Sullivan one question during his interview: "What did you think of this franchise's 2023 season?" Sullivan, whose hiring isn't yet official, needs to have said, "It was a huge disappointment, and a borderline failure." If Ross heard anything else he should have kicked Sullivan out of his office and informed him that such a participation-trophy mentality isn't welcome to the new-era Miami Dolphins.
The Miami Dolphins are finalizing a deal to hire Green Bay Packers vice president of player personnel Jon-Eric Sullivan as their general manager, sources told ESPN's Adam Schefter on Friday. Sullivan joined the Dolphins after working for the Packers since 2003, starting as a scouting intern. He has served as Green Bay's vice president of player personnel since 2022, working closely with general manager Brian Gutekunst for a team that has reached the playoffs six of the past seven seasons.
Miami Dolphins defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver has been requested to interview for the Ravens' head coaching vacancy created by firing Harbaugh Tuesday night, according to an NFL Network report Wednesday. Weaver has significant ties to the Ravens. He was drafted by them out of Notre Dame in 2002, playing his first four seasons with the franchise. He returned to coach in Baltimore as an assistant from 2021 through 2023.
Almost everyone would agree it was a failed season for the Miami Dolphins. That's now two consecutive years in which that's been the case. The Dolphins (7-10) were one game worse this season than they were in the 2024 season as coach Mike McDaniel (35-33 regular season, 35-35 overall) posted the worst record of his four-year era. As an indication of how badly things went, consider that during the season the Dolphins fired their general manager (Chris Grier) and demoted their quarterback ( Tua Tagovailoa).
The Miami Dolphins signed six players to reserve/future contracts Tuesday: wide receiver AJ Henning, defensive tackle Alex Huntley, outside linebacker Derrick McLendon linebacker K.C. Ossai and offensive linemen Josh Priebe and Kion Smith. Futures contracts allow the team to immediately bring back players following the end to their season and before the start of the new league year, securing their rights for next season without affecting the current year's salary cap.
