Miami lost in Las Vegas and our model slid the Dolphins to six wins, which is closer to where the market had them all along
Updated
In July we said the responsible thing about Miami was to trust the market over our own model. The simulation had the Dolphins at seven wins and the betting line had them closer to five, and everything underneath the projection, a career backup at quarterback and a defense that had been gutted, said the market was right. Week 1 in Las Vegas settled some of the argument. Miami lost 27-13, scored one touchdown, and when we re-ran the season the Dolphins came out at six wins, a 6-11 finish with a five percent playoff chance. The model moved toward the market by a full win, and it moved for the reasons we said it would.
The quarterback projection came back to earth. Malik Willis now reads 3,850 yards, 17 touchdowns and ten interceptions behind a passer rating of 91, down from the 21 touchdowns and rating north of 100 that the July run handed him. That summer line looked like a starter's line for a player who had never held a starting job, and one game of evidence trimmed it. Willis was not a disaster in Las Vegas. He was 15 of 27 for 220 yards, no touchdowns, an interception and five sacks taken, which is ordinary, and ordinary is what the grade said all along. Our model still projects the offense at 338 points, 21st in the league, which is roughly where a functional but limited passing game with one great running back should land.
That running back is the reason the floor holds. De'Von Achane projects for 1,307 rushing yards and eleven touchdowns, plus 45 catches out of the backfield, and he remains the one player on this roster a defense has to plan for. The receiving corps is thinner than it was even in July. Caleb Douglas emerges as the top target at 64 catches for 1,070 yards, Malik Washington settles at 65 grabs and 804, and Chris Bell adds 42. Those are complementary pieces asked to be primary ones, and in Las Vegas that showed.
The defense is where the July concern hardened into a projection. Our model now has Miami allowing 429 points, the most of any team in the league. Minkah Fitzpatrick is gone, Rasul Douglas and Jack Jones are gone, Bradley Chubb is gone, and what remains gave up 27 to a Raiders offense we project in the bottom third. Joshua Uche is the bright spot up front at nearly 15 sacks, and Chop Robinson adds nine, but a pass rush cannot cover for a secondary that grades among the worst in football, and the yards allowed number, 28th in the league, says the coverage is exactly what the summer departures suggested it would be.
The division does no favors. Buffalo won a shootout in Houston and climbed to 8-9 in our projection. The Jets won in Tennessee on the back of a top-six defense and hold at 9-8. New England lost a close one in Seattle and sits at 8-9. Miami is the fourth team in a four-team division, and when we ran the rest of the season the Dolphins finished last in the East far more often than not. Six games against three teams that can each punish a mistake is a hard road for a roster leaning on a quarterback still proving he belongs.
The market opened Miami near five wins, and for the first time our model is within a win of it. We said in July we would hold the optimism until Willis showed something, and after one week the model has done the holding for us. Six wins is not a stand against Vegas. It is a projection that agrees with the market on the shape of the team and disagrees by about a win on the size of the hole.
The path to more is Achane forcing defenses to sell out and Willis growing into the job by October. If the young quarterback finds a rhythm and the running game buys him time, eight wins is not fantasy. The path to less is the defense, which has already shown it cannot get off the field, and a schedule that will keep asking it to. Our model weighs the second heavier than the first.
The next month does not offer the Dolphins a soft landing. Miami goes to San Francisco in Week 2 against an offense that just beat the Rams by twenty, hosts Kansas City in Week 3, travels to Minnesota and then hosts Cincinnati and the best passing game in the AFC. When we ran that stretch, the Dolphins were an underdog in three of the four and a modest favorite in Minnesota, and a 1-4 start would be exactly on the projection. This is the month in which Willis either shows the model something or confirms what it now believes. Against San Francisco and Cincinnati the defense is going to give up points. The question is whether the offense can keep pace with anyone.
So the read on Miami is a team our model overrated in July and has now corrected. The Dolphins have one elite player, a quarterback still auditioning, and a defense that lost too much to hold up. Six wins is where that adds up, and the safe read is now the model's read as well as the market's.
