Behind the Steel Curtain
Early in the season, the Steelers’ Week 15 Monday Night Football matchup versus the Dolphins looked like an easy-to-predict win for Pittsburgh. Miami started the year 1-6, and would be playing in the cold, on the road against a Steelers team that historically does very well on MNF.
But since then, Miami has morphed into a completely different team. After that dismal start, the Dolphins have gone 5-1, turning the beginnings of a tank into a campaign that might just save head coach Mike McDaniel’s job.
Now, it’s a battle between two AFC teams with similar records in Pittsburgh Monday night, with the 7-6 Steelers hosting the 6-7 Miami Dolphins.
Rushing YPG: 126.5 (8th)
Passing YPG: 178.2 (28th)
PPG: 21.6 (22nd)
RP: If you haven’t been keeping up with the Dolphins for a while, you might have some outdated assumptions about this offense.
When Mike McDaniel and his brand of Shanahan-influenced offense first arrived in Miami, the Dolphins had a prolific passing attack. In 2022, the arrival of McDaniel and Tyreek Hill revived quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. Miami’s new coach designed an offense built around Tagovailoa’s specific skillset. Tagovailoa is not the most physically imposing, nor does he have the biggest, most powerful arm. But he does have a quick release and he’s been lauded for his ability to make even quicker reads in the short-to-intermediate passing attack. With a new focus on exploting space to create favorable matchups in the intermediate middle of the field, Tagovailoa began to show some of the promise that made him a star at Alabama, and both Hill and Jaylen Waddle eclipsed 1,300 yards receiving yards. But even so, defenses — most notably the 49ers and Chargers — started to find solutions to Miami and Tagovailoa’s quirks by the end of the season.
That offseason, McDaniel began to form some new wrinkles into his offense. On the whole, the offensive concepts remained the same, but the Dolphins would begin to innovate ways to use pre-snap motion to get quick, free releases for their speedy skill players. Miami offense thrived, averaging 265.5 passing yards a game, mostly through feeding the ball to Hill, Waddle, or whichever running back was on the field. The Dolphins ranked second in scoring while Tagovailoa led the league in passing (4,624) and finished top-five in touchdowns (29).
But that’s not what the Dolphins offense is nowadays. Simlarly to previous season, defenses began to slow down Miami’s high-octane offense towards the end of the 2023 season. And the Dolphins have never really recovered from that. With the book out on Tagovailo’s seemingly limited skillset, the Dolphins offense regressed in 2024 and a turbulent offseason did little to improve their situation for 2025. Even before Hill had his season ended by a gruesome leg injury in Week 4, the Dolphins passing attack was struggling. Tagovailoa’s averaged depth of target (7.3) has nearly decreased by nearly a full yard from where it was in 2023 (8.1)....
