The Dolphins’ most important asset for the 2026 offseason is starting to take shape
Miami’s most important asset for 2026 is becoming more clear.
The outcome of possibilities for the Miami Dolphins‘ biggest asset of the 2026 offseason is starting to come into focus. Miami’s season has faltered courtesy of a frustrating but necessary youth movement, the regression quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, and some frustrating tendency warts that have persisted throughout head coach Mike McDaniel‘s tenure with the team. Now sitting at 6-9 with two games left to play, Miami’s first-round draft choice is facing a more specific range of outcomes.
The Dolphins, if the draft were today, would be picking 10th overall. There’s not much room left to go upwards — but there is some wiggle room for Miami. Perhaps even more importantly, the Dolphins have something in their back pocket that they should feel good about with their pick as we await to see the final placement.
Dolphins currently own a key advantage to other teams as draft order starts to settle
Miami’s six wins doesn’t put them in position to draft inside the top-5 of the 2026 NFL Draft. The top six teams in the draft order all have three wins or fewer with two games left to play. The Dolphins, simply put, won’t catch them. But one thing the Dolphins do have is the lowest strength of schedule of any team currently placed in the top-10.
Strength of schedule is the primary tiebreaker for the NFL draft order, not head to head victories (in case Miami finishes with the same record as the Bengals, Saints, or Commanders). Miami currently picks directly behind all three teams, with Cincinnati and Washington holding 5 wins and Washington holding four. Those are the only three teams remaining that Miami could mathematically pass — and the Dolphins’ .490 strength of schedule is worse than all three.
Miami Dophins’ current 2026 NFL Draft selections in the top-100
- First round: 1oth overall
- Second round: 44th overall
- Third round: 75th overall, 86th overall, 87th overall
We can very easily find ourselves in a world where the Dolphins lose their final two games and the Bengals defeat the Cardinals or Browns and the Saints defeat the Titans or Falcons — Miami would pass both teams in the standings in that scenario. To reach No. 7 overall, the Commanders would need to win both of their final two games while Miami loses both of their final two, plus both Cincinnati and New Orleans winning one.
The other side of this coin? Miami mathematically cannot pick any higher than 16th overall with two wins. With two losses, they will assuredly retain a top-10 pick thanks to their strength of schedule.
No one likes tracking draft order issues near the holidays. But this is the hand that the Dolphins have dealt us. And if they play similarly to how they did in Week 16, we’ll be looking at Miami locking in their first top-10 draft choice since 2021 and earning a pick in that range by their own performance for the first time since 2020. The irony there, of course, is that the player they picked the last time they “earned” a top-10 pick, Tua Tagovailoa, played a prominent role in their position to do the same now.