Here are the five storylines that will define the 2026 Dolphins season

Miami Dolphins admin September 12, 2026 0 Comments

Here are the five storylines that will define the 2026 Dolphins season

The Miami Dolphins will begin a new era on Sunday.

For the first time since their late January arrival, coach Jeff Hafley and general manager Jon-Eric Sullivan will get to see if they’ve built a solid team.

Regardless of whether you believe Miami will go 0-17 or 17-0, these will be the five storylines that will decide the season.

Can edge Chop Robinson make a third-year jump?

Get close enough to the 2024 first-round pick and the changes are obvious.

His shoulders are more broad. His arms appear bigger. And, his neck looks thicker.

The hope: Robinson’s redefined body will help him live up to his draft position and be a consistent force off the edge.

“I get to go out there and show the player that I am, the man that I am,” Robinson said. “I don’t have to show nobody else but myself and my teammates.”

This will be the first season that Robinson begins as “the guy.” There’s no Calais Campbell. No Jaelen Phillips. And no Bradley Chubb.

Everything—for better or for worse—will fall back on Robinson. Whether he can weather the storms will be paramount.

“When you put in hard work, and it meets an opportunity, he’ll be ready,” Hafley said. “And that’s the one thing I’m so proud of him for. It’s why you work so hard. It’s all the extra reps, and it’s everything that he’s done to prepare himself where he’s got everything in front of him now. Just he needs to go and play as hard and as fast as he can and not think about anything other than that because he’s earned it.”

Of course everyone wants to know whether he can set the edge in the run game. Robinson, to his credit, has shown flashes throughout training camp. Hopefully, it will translate to the games.

Can the offensive line dominate and stay healthy?

Ask center Aaron Brewer the No. 1 way for an offensive line to build chemistry and the answer might surprise you.

“Hang out,” Brewer said. “Just kick it with each other, no matter what you’re doing.”

With the investments made into the Dolphins’ rushing attack, namely drafting guard Kadyn Proctor as well as extending Brewer and running back De’Von Achane, the offensive line has to mesh—and quickly. Luckily, the seven-year veteran has led the charge in that regard. Case in point: it’s rare that you see the starting o-line not together, something Brewer has emphasized.

“We’ve just been blending and getting more quality time with each other,” Brewer said, calling it “stacking the years together” as he enters into his third season as a Dolphin. “So from when I first got here til now, we just evolved and it become a type of bond.”

If the Dolphins offensive line can stay healthy, the sky is the limit. They certainly have the pieces—a 2026 first-round pick in Proctor, a second-year player in Jonah Savaiinaea back at his original position of right guard and Patrick Paul, a promising left tackle—but the question will always be depth, especially considering that right tackle Austin Jackson has played in just 32 games since 2022.

Can rookie receivers take advantage of stacked boxes while a young secondary limits opponents’ passing attack?

Each of the opposing 14 defensive coordinators that the Dolphins face will do a version of the same plan.

Put eight men in the box and let the rookie wide receivers, namely Caleb Douglas, Chris Bell and Kevin Coleman Jr., beat them.

Whether they step up—or not—will be a telltale sign of how Miami will fair this season.

Coleman, however, is not worried.

“We don’t look at the age thing,” the rookie wide receiver said. “We know what people saying so they just make us go even harder. More fuel into the fire. We’re super detailed; I feel like that’s the biggest thing with our young group of guys.”

On the flip side, there’s about 17 starts in the Dolphins’ secondary.

Approximately 11 of them belong to cornerback JuJu Brents, who has dealt with injuries for most of his three-year career. Similar to Coleman, he doesn’t believe that the youth movement is necessarily a bad sign.

“We got dawgs,” Brents said. “It’s as simple as that. Once we get to playing, people will just realize.”

As a wise man once said, the good part about youth is you don’t know what you don’t know. Put differently, they should have a tremendous amount of confidence based solely on their lack of experience. Besides, if there’s any position group that should engender trust based solely on Hafley’s expertise, it’s the secondary.

“We got the most confidence in the world, especially CJ being a young guy, me in my second year, Ju in his third,” cornerback Jason Marshall Jr. said, alluding to rookie cornerback Chris Johnson and Brents. “We got high confidence so it’s now about going out there and making a play.”

Can defensive line defend the run?

The Dolphins could not stop the run for most of the 2025 season.

That’s because they relied heavily on a trio of rookie defensive lineman—Kenneth Grant, Jordan Phillips and Zeek Biggers—to pair alongside Zach Sieler.

The lessons that they learned, however, were invaluable.

“Being able to know the couple of blocks that you can get out of this look, it helps you be prepared for what you got coming,” Biggers said.

Hopefully that experience resonates amid a season that will find the Dolphins pitted against a slew of elite running backs including the San Francisco 49ers’, Detroit Lions’ Jahmyr Gibbs and the Buffalo Bills’ James Cook.

Can Malik Willis be a franchise quarterback?

He has the personality. He has the arm talent. And he had one impressive drive in the preseason.

Still one question remains: who will Willis be when the bright lights are on him?

Obviously, it doesn’t help that the Dolphins traded away wide receiver Jaylen Waddle, who would’ve immediately slotted into WR1 role. He does, however, have three rookie receivers who have earned his belief.

“They’ve been doing a great job, just obviously making plays and physical abilities they have,” Willis said. “Obviously, they haven’t got to show all that to you guys and maybe not on the game field, but I think they’ve been doing a great job, working hard, trying to do everything they can to learn the offense and make sure they’re as detailed as they are talented.”