Reconstructed Miami Dolphins motivated by ‘uncertain futures’
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla., July 28 (UPI) — Change was a chief motif of the Miami Dolphins‘ off-season, but players believe inherent uncertainty will motivate a nearly unrecognizable 2026 roster.
Fans will notice different faces popping from the necklines of jersey Nos. 1, 2, 10, 17 and 29, among others, due to the off-season departures of quarterback Tua Tagovailoa and previous franchise cornerstones. The Dolphins, who lead the NFL with a record $179 million in dead cap space due to some of those moves, filled voids with 13 draftees and a slew of free agents.
The makeover should result in increased training camp competition, but could initially trigger growing pains, as first-year coach Jeff Hafley’s team unearths an identity. Nearly half of the Dolphins’ current players being on one-year deals should lead to fierce position battles and wrestling for 53-man roster spots this summer.
“Guys being on one-year deals, I think that should be enough to motivate you,” Dolphins linebacker Jordyn Brooks said Tuesday at training camp in Miami Gardens, Fla.
“Knowing that your future is uncertain and everybody’s future is uncertain when you walk in this building, and so that should be enough to motivate you to go hard every day and give you the best that you got.”
Brooks, who signed a three-year, $51.3 million contract extension earlier this month, said he doesn’t look at the Dolphins’ current status as a rebuild, despite that belief being common among fans and media members.
“I realize, being in the league, everybody is super talented, and it’s not always what it looks like on paper,” Brooks said. “You can have the superstar-studded teams and they don’t be worth a darn. They don’t have the right chemistry. They don’t know how to connect the dots together. And then you can have a bunch of no-name teams who know how to gel together, who know how to win, know how to buy in together.
“I think if you have that, you have the perfect team. That’s the way I’m looking at it. I don’t really care if people think that it’s a rebuild or they think we’re going 0-17 or whatever people have been saying; I look at it as we got a bunch of football players who’s hungry, super talented.”
As a leader, Brooks will be tasked with providing an example for younger players and newcomers of what he wants the team to look like.
His message is simple: “just show up and work.”
“That’s the biggest thing that I want the locker room to understand is, we’re doing whatever it takes to win, whatever it takes to change the narrative around here, whatever it takes to turn the page over,” Brooks said.
“That’s the path that I’m taking.”
The Dolphins, who fired Mike McDaniel in January, won an average of 8.7 games over their former coach’s four-year tenure. Oddsmakers have their expected win total at 4.5 in 2026. They have the second-worst odds to win Super Bowl LXI.
But despite surrounding voices projecting a poor season for the Dolphins, they are in a league that feverously flaunts parity.
A recent example came from Super Bowl LX, when the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks met after missing the playoffs a season earlier. The Patriots’ Mike Vrabel also was among recent coaches — either in their first year with a new team or first year overall — to experience immediate success. He helped the Patriots, who won four games in 2024, earn 14 triumphs in 2025.
Former Cleveland Browns coach Kevin Stefanski, Kevin O’Connell of the Minnesota Vikings, Sean McVay of the Los Angeles Rams and Matt LaFleur of the Green Bay Packers, who worked with Hafley in 2024 and 2025, are recent first-year coaches to experience immediate NFL success.
Hafley said he’s learned a lot from coaches throughout his career, but cited roster construction, development and complexion of respective NFL divisions as factors that played into some first-year coach success.
“There’s a whole lot that goes into that,” Hafley said. “So no, I have not taken a lot into that, rather taken into going through our off-season, figuring out who we are, who we have, what we can be good at, what schemes fit who we have and what we can be good at and try to worry about ourselves.
“I’ve learned a lot from other coaches around the league, and I’ll take a lot of that with me and I’ll have questions along the way.”
Hafley plans to use the negative national perception of the Dolphins as motivation for his players, but “not immediately.”
“I’d be lying to you if I just said we’re going to ignore it,” Hafley said. “I’d rather not have that be the main focus because I think that kind of goes in one ear, you get fired up for a couple minutes and then you leave and it has to become real again.
“So I think there’s bigger things to talk about, foundations to build.”
Quarterback Malik Willis, who signed a three-year, $67 million contract in March, followed Hafley from Green Bay to Miami. He is among the many players at training camp with something to prove. But the self-proclaimed “introspective” quarterback remains focused on improvement and winning games, which he calls “the greatest stat.”
“I’m more than anything focused on what I have to say about me,” Willis said. “That’s what’s most important. Just as it is with you guys, you don’t care what other people say about you. When you have that issue, you have more problems than not.
“But I just try to focus on continuing to get better. I wouldn’t be in this position if the hard work and dedication that we put into this sport, none of us would, but I just try to focus on that and continuing to get better, because you could be one spot now and six months later you could be in another spot.”
The Dolphins will hold their first training camp practice Wednesday at Baptist Health Training Complex.
