Omar Kelly: Season's respectable stretch doesn't mean Dolphins are healed

Omar Kelly, Miami Herald on Nov 17, 2025

Published in Football

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MADRID, Spain — There they were — Tua Tagovailoa and Laremy Tunsil — standing in the middle of the field in Madrid facing one another for the overtime coin flip.

The reason for the rebuild (Tagovailoa), and the mechanism that provided a massive assist (the Tunsil trade), served as a reminder that seasons and talent are too often squandered in Miami.

Their presence encompassed the past seven Dolphins seasons, the beginning of general manager Chris Grier’s rebuild, and seeing Tagovailoa and Tunsil standing together was like being doused with a garbage bin full of ice water.

It was a shock to my system that convinced me that these two recent wins, and Miami’s seemingly easy stretch in the final six games, will be nothing more than fools gold.

These are the Dolphins, so they know how to tease.

This franchise knows how to sell hope, getting their fan base, and sometimes the media to ignore reality, overlook its two decades of dysfunction.

Seeing the coin flip was the moment the winner of this slopped game — which turned into a 16-13 Dolphins overtime victory after Jack Jones intercepted Marcus Mariota’s first overtime pass, and Riley Patterson kicked a 29-yard field goal to end the game, was the moment how this season ends no longer mattered.

“We are not searching for perfection. We are searching for conviction,” Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said of his resilient team, which clearly hasn’t quit on McDaniel and his coaching staff.

That’s admirable.

But coming into 2025 my standard was a winning season, and the consequences of not achieving it was the royal flush.

That hasn’t changed.

To even be comfortable with the status quo McDaniel’s team needs to win at least five of the final six games, getting to nine wins.

But then what for this foundationless franchise.

In fairness to the Dolphins, the team has a younger and cheaper [for now] left tackle than Tunsil. Patrick Paul, might be just as good as Tunsil, a five-time Pro Bowler, in a year or two.

Paul, De’Von Achane and Jaylen Waddle are the singular building blocks this franchise’s next decision-maker should build around.

Center Aaron Brewer and inside linebacker Jordyn Brooks are nice players as well, but next offseason they will both have their hands out asking for a raise because they will be entering the final year of the respectable, but manageable contracts they signed as free agents before the 2024 season.

As the Dolphins’ fight song played after the win, declaring that the Dolphins are “the greatest football team,” all I could think about is how far this franchise is from a Super Bowl.

It might as well be the distance between Madrid, where the game was played, and Miami.

In 2019 Grier traded away the team’s top players — Tunsil, Kenny Stills, Kiko Alonso and Co. — to purge the roster, making it younger and cheaper.

That was the “Tank for Tua” season, and six years later Dolphins fans can’t help but conclude the people in power picked the wrong quarterback because Justin Herbert was taken one pick behind Tagovailoa, his former backup at Alabama (Jalen Hurts) is a Super Bowl winner, and it’s a challenge to argue that Jordan Love isn’t ahead of Tagovailoa when it comes to skill sets.

Tagovailoa was supposed to be special, clutch and a franchise-changer based on what he did for the Crimson Tide, but the mobility he lost — for whatever reason — and the fact he shrinks when the Dolphins need him to be big is crippling.

In Miami’s game against the injury-decimated Commanders, which have lost six straight games after Sunday, the two things Miami did that resembled a winning football team is they ran the ball effectively, and didn’t commit a turnover.

However, if Matt Gay makes his 56-yard field goal McDaniel’s team would be sitting on its fourth fourth-quarter loss of 2025.

“I saw guys not wink or waiver. That’s an important part of football, and I’m not sure guys were equipped to do that earlier in the season,” Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said.

It’s time to come to terms with who these Dolphins are, and what they can do.

The Dolphins are consistently inconsistent. South Florida’s NFL franchise is 4-7 and running out of excuses.

We can firmly conclude that 11 games into the season, and seven losses on the ledger.

The Dolphins are two losses from producing a second straight losing season, and there shouldn’t be a debate about how things should end if that happens.

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