At a time when reports regarding the status of Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel for 2026 are conflicting, the status of defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver beyond 2025 remains equally uncertain.<\/p>\n
If he\u2019s back, Weaver has a clear message for the team\u2019s next General Manager, whoever it may be: The personnel on defense needs to be set far sooner than it was in 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think whatever we assemble as a group defensively, we need an opportunity to grow earlier,\u201d Weaver told reporters on Tuesday. \u201cWe need these people to be brought together earlier than they were. A lot of the guys that we ended up playing with either got here at the start of training camp, were kind of hurt in training camp, missed some of camp, so a lot of the growth we were trying to do as a defense occurred early in the season. When you combine that with the youth movement we were trying to make, that\u2019s what\u2019s going to happen early. I think eventually it started to click for all of them in terms of what the expectation and what we were trying to get done, but we need to start to get that ball rolling earlier than August. . . .<\/p>\n
\u201cOur secondary was all new guys. You had the injuries to Kader Kohou and Storm Duck and some of those guys that had gotten a bunch of reps in the system. Even Kader in the spring, you knew he was about to take a jump, so we had to go through some growing pains early just as we learned each other and they learned the defense. In doing that, that\u2019s why we had the bumps and bruises we had early. Now there\u2019s no excuse for a week ago, right? We laid that egg and we\u2019ve got to do right this week and make that right. But moving forward, we\u2019ve got to make sure in the offseason, whoever is going to be a part of this, we need them here. We can\u2019t be piecemealing this thing in August.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a valid point. It\u2019s already hard enough to lay the foundation during the offseason program. If whatever progress has been made in helmets, jerseys, and shorts becomes undone by roster changes once training camp opens, it becomes even harder to hit the ground running when the real games start.<\/p>\n
It may not be Weaver\u2019s concern in 2026. It may not be McDaniel\u2019s, either. But it\u2019s one of the things the next G.M. needs to consider when building the 2026 version of the Miami Dolphins, a team that last won a playoff game 26 years ago \u2014 and that has been to the postseason only three times since Stephen Ross became the primary owner in 2009.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At a time when reports regarding the status of Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel for 2026 are conflicting, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369914,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-369913","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-nfl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}