‘We’ve played five games’—Jeff Hafley did not mince words about an emerging Miami Dolphins offensive debate
Miami Dolphins head coach Jeff Hafley minced no words in shutting down an outrageous question on Monday afternoon.
Miami Dolphins head coach Jeff Hafley didn’t have much in the way of words when fielding the first question of his day-after press conference on Monday. The Dolphins, staring at a five game losing streak to open the 2026 NFL season, haven’t found the rhythm they need in the passing game throughout the first five weeks. And that has some wondering if a quarterback change could help.
“No. We’ve played five games. Malik is our quarterback,” said Hafley when asked if he was mulling a change. Thank goodness for that. As Hafley would go on to explain, there’s a whole bunch that needs to get better offensively. And while Willis needs to take a leap forward, he’s not alone.
Miami Dolphins head coach Jeff Hafley axes dreams of an in-season quarterback change during the bye week
“As far as the Malik questions, again, I totally respect all the questions. And I get everybody has a job to do. So good question. We need to be better. Malik needs to be better. That’s not the headline. The headline is ‘we all need to be better’. And I mean that. I thought, yesterday, for the first time, we ran the ball really well. We ran for 200 yards against a really good team. But everything in the pass game has to be better. It’s the receivers. The tight ends. It’s the protection. It all has to tie in and it all has to be better…we will work through that. I have confidence in the coaches, I have confidence in the players we have. We will work through that and we will get better. It’s been five weeks.”
— Miami Dolphins head coach Jeff Hafley
I say this with all due respect. But what are we doing? The Dolphins entered this season with a first-time starter at quarterback commanding an offense with three rookie wide receivers and a rookie tight end manning major roles in the offense. The team’s long high-priced skill player went down with injury early in Week 3. And the team’s offensive payroll for the active roster doesn’t surpass $100 million in cash this season.
Miami’s the only team in the league who can say that. The top spending teams in the league are more than twice as invested (Buffalo and Green Bay) in cash this season. Both teams are over $200 million in cash payroll this season.
The circumstances were so extreme that folks spent all summer wondering if the Dolphins were purposefully aligning themselves to lose games. And we couldn’t make it to the middle October without getting asked if a quarterback change is on the way?
My empire for…some context
Call me a hopium dealer if you’d like. Consider it ‘cope’. Or ‘excuses’. In reality, it’s called context. And it’s something that we all knew was a probability for this season when the dominoes started falling in February and March. Yet here we are, five weeks into the season, so flustered by the growing pains of a young group and an inexperienced quarterback that we’re opining about a change behind center? Four of Miami’s five defensive opponents rank in the top-12 in opponent passer rating allowed defensively — three of them rank in the top eight. Really?
None of this is to say that the Miami Dolphins owe Malik Willis anything long-term as the quarterback of the franchise. He, like any player in the league, should be subjected to replacement when the team finds an upgrade available and attainable. But Willis will have the next 13 weeks to try to level up his game to make that possibility more complicated.
He certainly won’t do it on the bench. And Miami booting him to the bench after just five starts would only set up a dead end. There’s something there to work with for Willis and he needs to continue to play to feel out just how easily attainable that is. There’s a saying: ‘if you don’t stand for anything, you’ll fall for everything.’ Good for Hafley and company for standing for reasonable sample sizes. Anything less would be just chasing shiny objects — and that’s a first class ticket to not knowing what you have anywhere at all.
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