Jeff Hafley was certainly transparent with the Dolphins’ fan base when he made an admission seldom heard from an NFL head coach.
“Success is not going to be measured in wins and losses this year — and I know nobody wants to hear that,” the Dolphins’ first-year coach told Stephen A. Smith in a recent interview that was released Friday, speaking with an unusual candor for the public face of a pro sports franchise.
“I want to see where we end and how far we can take this thing, and how much we develop these players … Success for me is going to be: We go on that field and we play so hard that even you turn it on and say, ‘Man, those guys are flying around.’
“I just think this year’s so much about developing who we are as a football team, finding the right guys and by the end of the year saying, ‘We’ve got something real powerful moving forward.”
It’s probably best that they’re not measuring success by wins and losses, because this roster needs a lot of help.
Most Dolphins starters barely played in a winless preseason with ended with a 17-12 loss to Atlanta at Hard Rock Stadium on Friday.
Afterward, Hafley expanded, and in some ways clarified, his earlier comments:
“We and I want to win in everything that we do. But success is not just defined by winning. Winning, for sure. That’s why you play the game… But at the same time, we need to make sure this process is built the right way.
“The whole key to this year is do everything we can to win football games but making sure we do it right, so the foundation is right and the process is right. I want to make sure we’re doing it the right way with no shortcuts.
“It’s important that we move this thing forward and build… because we want to get back on top. To do that, you got to go through some hard stuff, with competing in mind to win in everything we do, but keeping the main thing our process and the detail and the toughness and not taking shortcuts and not flinching along the way, so at the end of the year, we can look back and say, ‘Our foundation is strong. We’re not going away. Look out, ‘We’re coming.’
“That kind of got lost in our conversation [with Stephen A. Smith]. I can look you in the eye and say: We are going to do everything we can to try to win every single game.”
He added: “I like the camp that we had. I think it’s a really good starting point. It was a hard camp, a physical camp. We pushed them.”
Hafley addressed other issues:
▪ Even though quarterback Quinn Ewers practiced this week, Hafley said he “never truly felt comfortable enough to move [him] around to be able to go out and play in a live setting” because of his groin injury.
▪ He said rookie linebacker Jacob Rodriguez, who did not play in the game, “will be day to day” with an undisclosed injury that sidelined him in recent days.
▪ On receiver Chris Bell, who had two catches (in four targets) for 22 yards in his first game since a November knee injury at Louisville:
“The way he’s worked… how hard he’s pushed himself to give him a chance to get back where he’s at right now. A lot of people didn’t give him a chance to get back a lot later, which is probably why he was drafted where he was. He attacked it.
“What you’re seeing right now is he hasn’t played a lot of football. And he needs to do that. It’s the muscle memory, the movement, the suddenness…
“We definitely wanted to try to get him involved early because he was going to be on a pitch count.”
Bell got up quickly after a hard hit, which was encouraging. “He’s got to get hit again,” Hafley said. “He hasn’t been in a long time.”
▪ He said most starters didn’t play in part because of injuries and in part because the front office and coaches wanted to evaluate others.
Dolphins offensive starters played only one series in three preseason games. “It wasn’t the plan,” Hafley said. “We had a bunch of injuries and became super thin at a lot of positions.”
▪ Hafley said linebackers Tyrel Dodson and Willie Gay Jr. played a lot because they didn’t have many healthy players at the position.
“We were down to two linebackers for the rest of the game,” Hafley said, noting that Rodriguez, Jordyn Brooks and Ronnie Harrison are injured.
▪ He said he saw improvement from quarterbacks Cam Miller and Mark Gronowski.
Gronowski continued playing after taking a hard hit: “I respect his toughness,” Hafley said.
This story was originally published August 28, 2026 at 10:28 PM.
Miami Herald
Barry Jackson has written for the Miami Herald since 1986 and has written the Florida Sports Buzz column since 2002.