A ton of teams have been in the market for new head coaches so far in this NFL cycle, as 10 franchises will enter next season with new leaders.
The Miami Dolphins were amongst those teams, but they hired Jeff Hafley to replace Mike McDaniel as their head coach. Hafley will be tasked with getting the team back to the playoffs after it fell short in each of the last two seasons.
Based on a poll from The Athletic, Hafley may have his hands full.
“The Athletic asked a panel of 10 coaches and high-ranking team executives to rank the head-coaching vacancies by job attractiveness,” Jeff Howe wrote. “(None of the voters are employed by a team with a vacancy.) A first-place vote was worth 10 points, a second-place vote worth nine points, etc.”
The Dolphins job didn’t do well in the poll, ranking as the No. 7 job that was open this cycle. The result is a tough reality check that Miami has a lot of work to do to get back on track.
In the poll, the Dolphins received four sixth-place votes, three seventh-place votes, two eighth-place votes and one last-place vote. Only the Cleveland Browns, Las Vegas Raiders and Arizona Cardinals finished lower in the overall results of the poll.
Hopefully, Hafley will be able to turn things around quickly for Miami, but there are some major concerns with the roster, starting with the quarterback position.
Miami owes a ton of money to Tua Tagovailoa, yet the former first-round pick was benched by McDaniel toward the end of the 2025 regular season. Tagovailoa struggled in 2025, throwing 20 touchdowns and 15 interceptions while completing 67.7 percent of his passes for 2,660 yards.
The Dolphins went just 6-8 in Tagovailoa’s starts, the first time in his career where the team had a losing record in the games that he started.
It’s possible that the coaches and executives polled for this exercise aren’t high on Tagovailoa and aren’t sure where the Dolphins will pivot at quarterback this offseason.
Even though McDaniel came up short in his last two seasons leading Miami, filling his shoes won’t necessarily be an easy task for Hafley.
In his four seasons as Miami’s head coach, McDaniel led the franchise to a 35-33 regular-season record and made the playoffs two times. The Dolphins did not win a playoff game under McDaniel, but they nearly won the AFC East in his second season as the head coach.
“The issue here, though, is the Dolphins must balance a teardown with a rebuild,” Howe wrote while breaking down Miami’s ranking in the poll. “Quarterback Tua Tagovailoa’s future is in flux after a late-season benching, but the Dolphins owe him $54 million guaranteed in 2026. If they cut him, they’ll essentially be trying to re-build the roster with one hand tied behind their back due to the cap ramifications. And from there, wide receiver Tyreek Hill, who suffered a gruesome knee injury in Week 4, headlines a list of potential cap casualties.”
The Dolphins have an interesting offseason ahead, and it’s clear that other people around the NFL aren’t very envious of Miami’s position.
Hopefully, the Dolphins hit a home run with the Hafley hire and will be able to contend for a playoff spot sooner rather than later.
