New data paints quite the picture of the Dolphins’ 2025 pass protection — and reveals where popular narratives don’t line up with reality

Who is (and isn’t) pulling their weight on passing downs for the Dolphins’ offense so far in 2025?

Kyle Crabbs — NFL National Writer

Oct 10, 2025 5:46 PM EDT

The Miami Dolphins‘ offensive line has one of the most high-stakes jobs in all of football. They’re protecting for a quarterback in Tua Tagovailoa who has proven he’s as essential to the offensive operation as any signal caller in the league. He’s also proved to be one of the least durable starting quarterbacks in the pros — having missed at least four games by injury in every season but one since 2021.

There’s already so little glory for the big guys up front. But with the amplified focus on keeping this quarterback upright and the perceived limitations of the offense as they try to keep the hits down, scrutiny is easy to come by, especially with the team sitting at 1-4.

Who is, and isn’t, pulling their weight so far in 2025?

Where is the pressure leaking in for the Dolphins’ pass protection unit so far in 2025?

Here’s the good news for the Dolphins — a recent publishing of pressure responsibility thus far in 2025 slot left tackle Patrick Paul amongst the best in the NFL. So, too, is the center position with Aaron Brewer. Those two positions combined account for just 22% of partial or full responsibility of quarterback pressure for Miami through five games.

Throw in Tua Tagovailoa’s own management of the pocket and that number grows to 31% — a respectable figure for one half of the OL/quarterback puzzle. It’s when you look at the rest of the responsibility distribution that you should be alarmed.

The responsibility of the quarterback, left tackle, and center combined is lower than left guard alone.

Left guard, of course, is rookie Jonah Savaiinaea — the team’s second-round draft choice this past April. Miami was aggressive to pursue him and the team recently admitted courtesy of Frank Smith that the vision to pair him with Patrick Paul as a young combination on the left side served as the motivation to plug Savaiinaea in at left guard.

The results have not been great. He’s responsible for a 50% higher share of pressure blame that a trio of back-up options at right guard with Kion Smith, Daniel Brunskill, and Cole Strange equally splitting the reps after starter James Daniels went down with injury on the opening possession of the season. Think about that for a minute.

Swing tackle Larry Borom deserves some flowers. His pressure responsibility has been about league-average across the last four games — that’s all you can really ask for in a backup lineman. And these numbers aren’t through the typical lens of Miami passing games under Mike McDaniel, either. Tagovailoa his holding the ball for an average of 2.60 seconds from snap to release though five games — that number is way up from the last two seasons.

Tagovailoa averaged 2.30 seconds per attempt on 399 attempts in 2024. He averaged 2.33 seconds across 600 attempts in 2023. The 2.60 seconds per attempt mark ranks as a career high across any of his six seasons in the NFL.

So if you’re looking for some room for improvement in protecting the quarterback, this statistical breakdown gives you a pretty good idea of where it needs to start.

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