Dolphins 2025 Season in Review

De'Von Achane finished plus 242 rushing yards over expected — fifth among qualified runners in the entire league. That's the stat that survives a 7-and-10 year in Miami. Here's how the Dolphins' identity flipped from a Tyreek Hill vertical passing attack to an Achane-led ground game, why the defense became the anchor that sank the season, and the one number that explains why this team kept losing winnable games. Seven and ten, third in the AFC East, no playoffs — and five losses by one score. The Dolphins didn't get blown out of contention. They got muffed in the margins.

Let's start with the team by the numbers. Miami's offensive expected points added — the metric that captures how much each snap improved their chances of scoring — landed at minus 15.8, twenty-second in the league. The defense was worse: plus 89.6 expected points added allowed, and on defense you want that number negative, so plus 89.6 is a bottom-quarter result, twenty-sixth. Third down was where drives went to die — 35.4 percent, twenty-second percentile. And the turnover math told the story: just 19 takeaways, twenty-first in the league, against an offense that gave it away constantly. Week to week, boom-or-bust in the ugliest way — 34 on the Falcons in Week 8 and 30 on the Bills in Week 10, then 6 against Cleveland in Week 7 and 6 against Baltimore in Week 9. You never knew which team was showing up.

Now let's talk about the passing offense. Tua Tagovailoa's adjusted net yards per attempt — yards per dropback after baking in touchdowns, picks, and sack yardage — came in at 5.29, twenty-ninth among qualified starters. That's the number that frames the year. The Dolphins threw for just 195.4 yards per game, total passing expected points added came in at minus 4.5 on 520 attempts, and Tagovailoa's completion percentage above expectation was minus 0.3 — slightly below baseline given his throw difficulty. The story underneath: Tyreek Hill played four games and disappeared, leaving Jaylen Waddle as the lead receiver with 64 catches for 910 yards and 6 touchdowns. Tua's line — 260 of 384 for 2,660 yards, 20 touchdowns, 15 picks — is the line of a quarterback running an offense that lost its vertical threat in September and never replaced it. Protection told on itself too: 38 sacks on 533 dropbacks, a 7.1 percent sack rate, twelfth in the league. The passing game wasn't disastrous. It just never broke through.

Now let's dig into the rushing offense. This is where the Dolphins actually had something — 4.7 yards per carry, 120.2 rushing yards per game, and Achane's plus 242 rushing yards over expected, plus 1 yard over expected per attempt, fifth among qualified runners. He carried 238 times for 1,350 yards and 8 rushing touchdowns, with another 67 catches for 488 yards. The verdict the tape and the numbers agree on: Achane was the offense. The best illustration came in the Week 10 win over Buffalo — a 59-yard touchdown worth over five expected points that flipped a divisional game. The frustration is that rushing expected points added still landed at minus 12.4, because outside of Achane the room produced almost nothing — Ollie Gordon and Jaylen Wright combined for fewer than 500 yards on 140 carries. Boom-or-bust by design: Achane or nothing. When defenses sold out to stop him, the offense had no second answer.

Next up, the pass defense. This is where the Dolphins got muffed. The secondary and pass rush combined to allow 229.6 passing yards per game, 29 passing touchdowns, and a passing expected points added allowed of plus 69.7 — again, you want that number negative, so plus 69.7 is a deeply red mark, twenty-second percentile. The pass rush got home for 39 sacks, seventeenth in the league, but the pressure didn't translate — just 18 takeaways on the year. When the defense did create a turnover, it tended to be massive: Bradley Chubb's strip-sack and recovery on Bryce Young swung over five and a half expected points on a single snap. Those moments were the exception. Week to week, this defense let opposing quarterbacks dictate tempo — 41 percent third-down conversion rate allowed, and the worst stretches came in chunks: 33 to the Colts in Week 1, 45 to the Bengals in Week 16, 38 to the Patriots in Week 18. When it cracked, it cracked all the way open.

And the run defense was just as leaky. 133.5 rushing yards per game allowed, 18 rushing touchdowns surrendered, and rushing expected points added allowed of plus 19.94 — nineteenth percentile, bottom third by any measure. The per-carry number was plus 0.04 expected points added allowed per rush, meaning opposing offenses generated positive expected value on the ground almost every snap. Steady leak, not boom-or-bust. There were flashes — a strip-and-recover against Atlanta's Bijan Robinson worth over five expected points — but the season-long pattern was a front that got moved off the ball. When you can't stop the run and you can't stop the pass, you finish 7-and-10, even with a top-five rushing-yards-over-expected back in your backfield.