Ryan Fitzpatrick set the terms himself last week: Lose in Las Vegas, and the Miami Dolphins are headed for the first 0-17 season in NFL history. The Dolphins lost in Las Vegas on Sunday, 27-13, and on Monday afternoon, the former Miami quarterback was asked whether he still meant it.
He did. Speaking on an Amazon Prime Video media session, Fitzpatrick told Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald that he is not backing off the prediction, that a winless season is “in reach” in part because of how difficult Miami’s schedule is, and that he is nonetheless rooting for the Dolphins to win a game.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, on an Amazon Prime Zoom session just now, doesn't back off his 0-17 prediction for the Dolphins, telling me the totally imperfect record is "in reach" in part because of the difficulty of the schedule. But he makes clear he's rooting for Miami to win a game.
— Barry Jackson (@flasportsbuzz) September 14, 2026
That last part is new, and so is the framing. A week ago the number was a conditional, and now the condition has been met and the man who set it is treating 0-17 as a live possibility rather than a certainty.
The distinction matters, because the Dolphins’ own Week 1 tape handed him more evidence than he had when he first said it.
The prediction had a trigger, and the trigger fired
Fitzpatrick made the call on the Sept. 10 episode of “Fitz & Whit,” and the show clipped the segment for X the same day. Dolphin Nation laid out the full prediction, his schedule math and the counterargument from his own 2019 Miami team before kickoff, so the short version will do here: He saw the two Jets games as Miami’s only realistic openings and Sunday at Allegiant Stadium as the one game the Dolphins had to have.
Fitz thinks there's a possibility the Dolphins become the first team to ever go 0-17 👀
"I don't see a whole lot of wins in there… look at the way that their roster is constructed this year, you feel bad for them" pic.twitter.com/qCcyAahqvu
— Fitz & Whit (@fitzandwhit) September 10, 2026
They did not have it. Las Vegas led 17-3 at halftime, Miami got within four points early in the third quarter on a Malik Willis touchdown run and never scored again, and the prediction survived the weekend intact.
Monday was the first chance to see whether Fitzpatrick would soften it once the loss was real instead of hypothetical. He added a rooting interest and kept the number.
What Week 1 gave him
The loss looked like the kind that makes a bleak forecast easier to defend. Miami finished with 259 total yards, converted two of 10 third downs and allowed 17 pressures and five sacks, and Willis told reporters afterward that he would take responsibility for every one of the sacks, describing the sack as a quarterback statistic.
Dolphins QB Malik Willis said he'll take accountability for all five sacks that occurred, calling the sack a QB stat. https://t.co/KexQBt3OKh
— David Furones (@DavidFurones_) September 14, 2026
The team had eight penalties for 61 yards, including holding calls on Patrick Paul and Aaron Brewer and the taunting flag on JuJu Brents that Jeff Hafley has already said will cost the cornerback money if the film confirms it.
On the other side of the ball, the Raiders handed off 37 times and faced third-and-7 or longer only three times before halftime, which is how a 3.5 yards-per-carry day still produced a two-score lead.
The players did not argue with any of it. Brewer said Monday that the message from Hafley was to “eliminate the bad,” adding that a team cannot win with that many penalties, sacks and turnovers.
Miami Dolphins C Aaron Brewer, today, on coach Jeff Hafley message: "Eliminate the bad, you know what I'm saying? Like, you can't win when you have that many penalties and sacks and turnovers."
— Joe Schad (@schadjoe) September 14, 2026
Zach Sieler framed it the same way.
“We’ve got to make sure that we are locked in and focused and we don’t beat ourselves with stupid penalties or decisions or mistakes out there,” Sieler said.
The schedule is doing the work
Fitzpatrick’s reasoning ran through the slate a week ago and it runs through the slate now. Miami plays at San Francisco on Sunday, hosts Kansas City in the home opener on Sept. 27, travels to Minnesota on Oct. 4 and hosts Cincinnati on Oct. 11 before the bye.
The full 2026 schedule does not reach the first Jets game until Oct. 25, which under Fitzpatrick’s own logic makes Week 7 the first realistic opening.
That is the part of the argument that has not changed since Sept. 10, and it is the part he leaned on Monday. The Raiders game was supposed to be the soft landing, and the next four opponents include a 49ers team coming off a physical NFC West opener, the Chiefs and two NFC North road trips.
If Miami is going to make him wrong before Halloween, it will have to do it against a schedule that was built to make him right.
Why 0-17 is still a long way from real
The case against the number starts with the side of the ball that did its job. Miami’s defense held Kirk Cousins to 4.3 yards per play and intercepted him twice, with Dante Trader Jr. and rookie Michael Taaffe each coming away with a pick, and Ashton Jeanty needed 23 carries to reach 102 yards.
The two rookies at the center of that unit were the story of the day. Jacob Rodriguez and Chris Johnson were the only Miami defenders to play all 68 snaps, and Rodriguez led the team with 14 tackles while Johnson had 11, a tackle for loss and two passes defensed.
That made them the first pair of Dolphins rookies to post double-digit tackles in their debuts since the league began tracking the statistic in 1994, and Rodriguez did it while wearing the green dot and relaying calls to a defense full of first-year starters.
Trader, who has played next to him since camp, was asked Monday what stood out.
“His poise is crazy. He’s very, very calm. His presence is calming to everybody else,” Trader said.
The offense had its own rookie flash in Caleb Douglas, who caught five passes for 94 yards in his first NFL game, and Hafley’s postgame read was that the effort was never the issue.
“No one is sitting in there feeling good right now, and I’m certainly not feeling good right now,” Hafley said. “I am proud of the way the guys fought.”
Willis offered the shortest rebuttal of all. If seasons were meant to be judged on one game, he said, they would be called the playoffs.
Dolphins QB Malik Willis: If seasons were meant to be judged by one game, they would be called the playoffs.
He assesses his first game leading the Miami offense. pic.twitter.com/gOeTWIw6hr
— David Furones (@DavidFurones_) September 14, 2026
There is also the matter of Fitzpatrick’s own history. His 2019 Dolphins opened 0-7 by a combined 133-16 through three weeks and still won five games, a comparison covered in full before the opener and one that has not gotten any weaker after a 14-point loss to a team that finished 3-14 a year ago.
What comes next
Fitzpatrick will get asked this every week, because his day job puts him in front of a camera every Thursday and because the number is easy to remember. As long as Miami stays winless, he does not have to say anything new for the prediction to keep circulating, and Monday showed he is not in a hurry to take it back.
The Dolphins can end the conversation only one way, and the first chance comes at 4:25 p.m. ET Sunday at Levi’s Stadium. Fitzpatrick’s own schedule math says the real opening is six weeks off, but he also said he wants to be wrong, and after Sunday that puts him closer to the Miami locker room than his prediction suggests.
