Jeff Hafley spent Saturday morning doing two things at once: signing off on the first 12 cuts of his first NFL cutdown weekend and telling reporters, without hedging, that the roster underneath them is still short on bodies.
“We’re thin still,” the Dolphins head coach said during a Zoom briefing with local media. Hafley followed the admission by saying it is now his staff’s job to develop that depth with the players they have.
The timing is what makes it land. The Dolphins — cornerback Alex Austin, running backs Coleman Bennett and Donovan Edwards, tackle Kevin Cline, edge Seth Coleman-Lyles, tight end Ethan Conner, linebackers Stephen Dix Jr. and Jaheim Thomas, defensive linemen Alex Huntley and Cam Rice, safety Louis Moore and receiver Theo Wease Jr. — with the league-wide deadline to reach 53 set for Sunday at 6 p.m. ET.
Less than a day after a 17-12 preseason loss to Atlanta closed a winless August, the coach is describing a team that has to get lighter and deeper in the same weekend.
What Hafley said Saturday
The depth comment wasn’t a throwaway. Hafley framed the problem in terms of health first, telling reporters, “We have a bunch of guys right now who still aren’t ready to practice.”
He then widened it to the whole operation.
“We’re young and we have a lot of guys who don’t have a lot of experience in the NFL,” said Hafley. “We have three new systems on offense, defense and special teams. This is the infancy stages.”
That language matches what he told Stephen A. Smith earlier in the week, which is part of why it registered. But Saturday’s version came with roster consequences attached, and the biggest one involves the defensive line.
The Kenneth Grant IR math
Kenneth Grant, the No. 13 overall pick in 2025, has been sidelined with a leg injury since before the Giants game. Hafley said Tuesday that Grant was “week to week,” according to the team’s official transcript, and acknowledged real concern about the Sept. 13 opener at Las Vegas.
On Saturday he went a step further, acknowledging that Grant could begin the season on injured reserve with a designation to return. The mechanics matter here, and they explain why nothing has happened yet.
Rookie linebacker Trey Moore figures to occupy one of the team’s two IR-return spots available at cutdown, and the Dolphins have discussed Grant for the other. Moore’s situation is the clearer of the two — Hafley said Tuesday the rookie “will have surgery” on his ankle and “it will be a while.”
Timing is everything with this designation. A player placed on IR on Sunday with a designation to return does not count against the 53 and can come back after four games, but a player placed on IR before the cutdown is done for the year.
Keep in mind that if you use the vehicle of waiving a player with an injury settlement, you cannot re-sign that player until three weeks after injury settlement term ends. That NFL rule discourages team from mischief. And if you place any player on IR BEFORE Sunday, they're out… https://t.co/nzXMW61sg1
— Barry Jackson (@flasportsbuzz) August 29, 2026
That is why Grant has not been moved: The Dolphins have to carry him through Sunday afternoon to keep the option of getting him back in October.
There is a cost on the other side. Using the designation at cutdown burns one of the eight IR-return activations a team gets all season, which is what happened with kicker Jason Sanders a year ago. For a roster Hafley just called thin, spending one of eight in Week 1 is not nothing — but neither is losing a first-round defensive tackle for a full season when he could be back by midseason.
Adding to this on number 2 … the one drawback to putting a player on IR on Sunday: though it allows you an extra spot at that time, you are committing one of the eight allowed IR return designations, which is what happened last year with Jason Sanders, who was IR-designated but… https://t.co/V1dUYo5ztI
— Alain Poupart (@PoupartNFL) August 29, 2026
Grant played all 17 games as a rookie with five starts, finishing with 33 tackles and two sacks. Pro Football Focus listed him as a 2026 breakout candidate on the strength of his second-half improvement.
Losing that trajectory to a season-ending IR stash would be the worst outcome, which is why Sunday’s version of the move is the only one in play.
Two quarterbacks, maybe four running backs
The other structural news from the briefing was numerical. Hafley said the Dolphins will likely keep two quarterbacks and might end up keeping four running backs.
Jeff Hafley said Dolphins plan to keep 2 QBs, and said "that's a good question" when asked about whether Miami will keep 4 tailbacks.
That's interesting. Hints that someone might be on the move, or getting released.
— Omar Kelly (@OmarKelly) August 29, 2026
Two quarterbacks means Malik Willis plus one, and that one is not settled. Quinn Ewers, who has been managing a groin issue since the preseason opener, was held out Friday because the staff didn’t feel comfortable letting him move around in a game with the injury.
That left Cam Miller and Mark Gronowski — the same Gronowski the team waived and re-signed in early August — to take the finale, and Gronowski’s back-to-back drives were the best any Dolphins backup had looked all preseason.
The running back question is a product of the front office’s own aggressiveness. The Dolphins acquired Jarquez Hunter from the Rams for Tutu Atwell on Thursday, per the team’s announcement, and added Bennett off the street earlier in the week before cutting him Saturday.
Carrying four behind De’Von Achane is unusual for a team that just said it is thin elsewhere, which is exactly why Hafley’s non-answer drew attention.
The Stephen A. Smith backdrop
Every word Hafley says about expectations this week is being read against his interview with Stephen A. Smith.
Asked to define success for 2026, Hafley said it was “not going to be measured in wins and losses this year” and added, “I know nobody wants to hear that.”
He did not walk it back Friday night so much as reframe it. After the Falcons loss, Hafley told reporters the message had gotten lost.
“I can look you in the eye and say: We are going to do everything we can to try to win every single game,” Hafley said.
Dolphins coach Jeff Hafley got fired up as he expanded on his comments to Stephen A. Smith about success this season not being measured by wins and losses. pic.twitter.com/bB7oai6nIh
— David Furones (@DavidFurones_) August 29, 2026
Saturday’s “thin” is the more useful version of the same idea. It is an assessment of what he has, not a prediction of what it will produce, and it lines up with the roster moves rather than contradicting them.
What the 0-3 preseason showed
The Dolphins finished the exhibition schedule 0-3, and the finale was played almost entirely by players fighting for the bottom of the roster. Hafley said Saturday the original plan was for starters to play into the second quarter Friday before injuries forced a change.
“We’ve got to make sure the guys we deem as starters are healthy enough to play in Vegas,” Hafley said.
He defended the decision to limit starters to one preseason series overall, telling reporters he strongly believed it was the best way to be ready for Week 1. Friday night he had cited being “super thin” at multiple positions as the reason.
Dolphins coach Jeff Hafley notes injuries and being "super thin" at a lot of positions as reasons why he chose not to play starters tonight, even though he went into the preseason hoping they would play more.
"There was a lot of evaluation left," he said for other players vying…
— David Furones (@DavidFurones_) August 29, 2026
The depth problem showed up in the film. Pro Football Focus charged the top three backup tackles — Caedan Wallace, Gottlieb Ayedze and Charlie Heck — with a combined nine pressures allowed against Atlanta.
Tight end Will Kacmarek, a third-round rookie who had been starting, is week to week and out this coming week.
What’s left before Sunday
Hafley said he is letting general manager Jon-Eric Sullivan handle all questions about the cuts, which means the next wave will come as transactions rather than explanations. The 12 players waived Saturday were all non-vested and will sit on the waiver wire until Monday’s claim deadline.
The Grant decision, the second quarterback and the fourth running back are the three open items that will define the initial 53. Hafley’s honesty about the roster’s shape has made those calls easier to read than they would be under a coach still selling August optimism.
The Dolphins open at Las Vegas on Sunday, Sept. 13, at 4:25 p.m. EST, the roster that gets there will be the one Hafley described Saturday — thin, young and, by his own account, still being built.
