Dave Hyde: How did the Dolphins get here? (And I don't mean Madrid)

Dave Hyde, South Florida Sun-Sentinel on Nov 15, 2025

Published in Football

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The aging tackle still has a soft voice, still wears tie-dye T-shirts backing his Grateful Dead music and still is the long answer to the short question the Miami Dolphins need to resolve:

How did they get here?

And, by here, the idea isn’t Madrid, on Sunday, where the Dolphins play the Washington Commanders. Here is nowhere. Here is lost. Here is a GPS location showing this franchise wandering through the wilderness on a mud trail. Again.

It’s timely to discuss how this happened with tackle Laremy Tunsil, whose trade started this Tank Era, on the other side of the field Sunday. It’s necessary for the Dolphins to talk about this era’s full failure, too, considering so many of those involved look to be involved in the coming Rebuild: The Sequel. Team owner Steve Ross. President Tom Garfinkel. Vice President of Salary Cap Brandon Shore. Possibly coach Mike McDaniel.

It was Garfinkel’s idea to tank before the 2019 season and his idea to hire Brian Flores as coach. That doesn’t mean those were his decisions. They were Ross’ decisions. Fired general manager Chris Grier went along with them, as was his habit, which should have been a flashing, warning sign considering all the difficult football decisions these seven years involved.

Two central decisions explain how they got nowhere:

— 1.They tanked for Tua Tagovailoa. They actually tanked for Joe Burrow, but that’s another matter that failed. They drafted Tua over Justin Herbert and got Ryan Tannehill II. Not a bad quarterback. Just not capable of lifting a team like seven years of planning mandated.

— 2. The Tunsil trade and its misunderstood aftermath. It delivered two first-round draft picks and one second-round pick at its core. The first-rounders were smartly traded again by Grier, the picks multiplying. It requires a tree with various branches to fully explain by now.

But getting a treasure chest of picks was just half the trade. The other half was turning them into players. Here’s who Grier drafted with those draft picks: Noah Igbinoghene, Solomon Kindley, Jaylen Waddle, Jevon Holland, Channing Tindall, Erik Ezukanma and Dante Trader Jr.

Grade: D-plus. No great players. Waddle is good, and the lone one offered a second contract by the Dolphins. Trader is a rookie showing some promise. Igbinoghene is Tunsil’s teammate in Washington.

The Tunsil trade also was Hamburger Helper in making big deals for Tyreek Hill and Bradley Chubb. For instance, they sent first- and second-round picks from the Tunsil trade plus two fourth-rounders and a sixth-rounder to Kansas City for Hill in 2023.

They also had to make Hill the game’s highest-paid receiver with a four-year, $120 million contract to complete the deal. That represented a philosophical U-turn in the franchise. Forget the draft. They wanted to win now. Only they never won.

Still, stop here, and the Tunsil trade is decent for all the possibility it brought. But you can’t stop here. You have to factor in the cost of replacing Tunsil, too. He’s a five-time Pro Bowl tackle over the past six seasons. All those picks and all those names brought three Pro Bowl seasons — two by Hill, one by Chubb. That’s it.

Here’s the tab for replacing Tunsil: a first-round pick on Austin Jackson; second- and third-round picks on Liam Eichenberg; an $87.5 million deal to sign Terron Armstead; and, finally, a second-round pick on Patrick Paul.

That’s a full draft. Hill’s cost was another full draft. Chubb (essentially a first-round pick) and cornerback Jalen Ramsey (a third-round pick), cost the meat of a third draft and helped put the Dolphins in salary-cap hell.

Who was protecting the organization?

No one, as it turned out. That’s what the Dolphins need to talk about if same cast tries, tries again to rebuild. They need to talk about it all: If building with small players was smart; if relying on a go-along GM was done for convenience; what McDaniel has learned if he’s back; why tanking and then reversing-the-tank was done.

The Dolphins traveled around the world to meet a similar Washington team in 3-7 chaos. But it doesn’t really matter where the game is played right now. The Dolphins dateline is the same. Nowhere. The issue they need to discuss is how they got here.