Malik Willis has an opportunity this season to prove he can be a long-term starter in the NFL. Megan Briggs / Getty Images
The Athletic Football Show is previewing all 32 teams leading up to the start of the 2026 NFL season. Below are select quotes from the show’s preview of the Miami Dolphins. The quotes are edited for clarity. You can watch the whole preview on YouTube and in the embedded video below, or listen to the full AFC East preview wherever you get your podcasts.
Dave Helman on what about the Dolphins most excites him: I’m pretty excited to watch this run game, specifically when you consider the pieces on the offensive line. De’Von Achane was not only explosive, but very efficient considering what the Dolphins were as an offense last year. Malik Willis, you know for sure he can add an explosive element to your run game. So with a very mobile quarterback who rushed for a first down 37 percent of the time over his last two years. It’s admittedly not a huge sample size, but he’s a good bit more mobile than Tua (Tagovailoa). A quarterback like Willis, a running back like Achane, I’m super excited about Patrick Paul, and with Kadyn Proctor playing between him and Aaron Brewer, the offensive line in general has exciting potential. This might blow up in my face, but in August, I’m excited to see what this looks like.
Derrik Klassen on what he’s watching the first month of the season: Bobby Slowik 2.0. I know that obviously what he was, especially at the end, in Houston was kind of vanilla. It was a lot of play-the-hits Shanahan stuff, and the run game in particular never really got off the ground. I’m wondering how much of an effect there is from him being on this staff last year and getting to see some of the Mike McDaniel stuff up close with these exact players for the most part. So I’m curious about how much has he taken from the failings that he had in Houston, and then seeing one of the best run game designers in the NFL get to do this on this exact team, how much of that can he really put together and drive things forward?
Robert Mays on what’s keeping him up at night: It is one of the thinnest NFL rosters I can remember staring at on Aug. 31. And we knew that was gonna happen. They’re paying about 35 percent of the cap in dead money in year one of a reset. The Dolphins have $196 million in dead money. It’s insane. You can’t build an NFL roster this way, and they know that. They knew that they were going to have to take a disgusting, stomach-churning amount of medicine this year. And that’s exactly what’s happening. My concern is that it’s so bad that it’s just demoralizing over the course of the year.
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Sep 1, 2026
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