The start of the 2025 season is still many moons away for the Miami Dolphins, as they will kick off their regular season when they take on the Indianapolis Colts on Sept. 7. Miami has preseason games before then, but the Dolphins won’t begin their preseason slate until Aug. 10.
This coming season’s iteration of the Dolphins will have a lot to prove, but head coach Mike McDaniel, who’s heading into his fourth season as the franchise’s leader from the sidelines, said Thursday that “a team bond has occurred” already and that the Dolphins have found an identity.
“I’m happy with we’re we are at…going into summer break,” McDaniel said. “A team bond has occurred where you have a team identity. A standard has been created how we do our business, that is where I want it.
“What does that mean moving forward? Now that we’ve identified that, we have systems in place that is a daily application…
“Guys were highly motivated to have a different sense of team. Because they were motivated, all the people in place have worked together to satisfy that. We’ve established what the standard of our team is, and that’s a big deal moving forward.”
At least one star player for the Dolphins has made it clear that he’s ready for some newfound team success this season. When asked on a Twitch stream how many yards he wants to accumulate, wide receiver Tyreek Hill said “f— that” and that he’s “trying to win a playoff game.”
Hill has yet to win a playoff game as a member of the Dolphins organization, and Miami is on a lengthy drought with its most recent playoff victory coming all the way back in the year 2000. The Dolphins have made the playoffs two times under McDaniel but have yet to get over the hump and actually come out on top in a postseason contest.
The Dolphins are looking to get back to their winning ways this season after they endured their least successful season under McDaniel so far in the 2024 campaign. Miami finished with a record below the .500 mark at 8-9 and missed the playoffs for the first time in a little while, though poor injury luck seemingly played a part in the team’s underwhelming campaign.
As encouraging as McDaniel’s recent comments are, fans of the team perhaps shouldn’t get their hopes up yet and should instead wait to see how the team performs this season before assessing the validity of his words. After all, Dolphins defensive stud Bradley Chubb admitted that in the past, the Dolphins didn’t do enough to back up their words when it came to their culture.
