Kenneth Grant’s first game back for the Dolphins was short on volume, but the big rookie walked away encouraged after 16 snaps against the Cincinnati Bengals in his season debut.
“Felt pretty good,” Grant said a few days after Miami’s Week 5 loss.
Grant had missed Miami’s first four games because of a toe injury, and the Dolphins have managed to hold up fairly well against the run without him. Still, with the 2025 first-round pick back on the field, the expectation is simple: Miami should get better.
That’s the standard Grant is putting on himself, too. Looking ahead to 2026, he made his goal plain: “Just get better, get better from last season. Be dominant, be dominating in the run and pass game, and get a lot of wins for this team.”
The 13th overall pick in the 2025 draft entered the league with plenty of scrutiny, going one spot ahead of Colts tight end Tyler Warren. His rookie year didn’t unfold the way he wanted, and there were some who viewed him as a reach by former general manager Chris Grier. For Miami, though, the ask hasn’t changed: be tough, physical and strong, and avoid becoming a disappointment.
Now Grant is trying to settle into Jeff Hafley’s defense, and the fit matters. The Dolphins believe the slimmer version of Grant can be exactly the kind of interior force this scheme needs.
His job description is straightforward enough. Be a wrecking ball inside.
Eat up blocks. Let the linebackers hunt.
“What Hafley asks us as a d-lineman in the run game is to grind blocks and be gritty type of guys, take on double teams,” Grant said. “So our guys, 10 (Rodriguez) and 20 (Brooks), can make plays and fly around. Just be us, mix it up and rush the passer and affect the QB.”
Jacob Rodriguez seems to already see what Grant can add. Rodriguez praised the way Grant stayed connected during his injury absence and made it clear the rookie never disappeared from the room.
“He's always got energy, working all the time in practice,” Rodriguez said. “The whole time he was on IR, he was around the guys.
He was a part of the team. He was in the meetings.
He was getting his body right. He's a pro and he's doing everything he needs to do to be here and help this team.
I'm a huge fan.”
Miami’s coaches like what they’ve seen, too. They say Grant has good feet for a player his size and can hold down the middle. Jeff Hafley called the debut “solid” and said the next step is getting Grant back into the full rhythm of things.
“I thought it was solid,” Hafley said of Grant’s debut. “I think getting his feet wet, getting the rust off. I think he did some good things and we need to get him going a little bit this week with what we do on the field and then get him back practicing more and playing more because we're going to need him.”
Grant said he feels more explosive this year and believes the four weeks spent watching rather than playing helped him get a firmer grasp on the scheme. Miami’s defense asks him to handle a lot of different responsibilities, and he says he’s ready for that challenge.
“Certain plays are, you know, designed for certain things, and need a specific technique for what we want to run,” Grant said. “We do a lot of different things. So I want to be able to execute all those different things.”
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Dolphins Defensive Tackle Move Says Plenty About This Thin Room
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With Smith now a free agent again, the bigger picture around the Dolphins defensive front is hard to ignore. Jeff Hafley said the bye week is being used to evaluate the players, the scheme and the coaching after the recent roster movement, which gives this week a bigger feel than just another pause in the schedule. For a thin room, every transaction says something, and this one left Smiths future in the NFL unsettled. [Read more 🡒]
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The history lesson matters here: teams that win it all usually do so by landing premium quarterbacks or impact players at positions with broader value, not by getting locked into one name at the top of the board. For Miami, that leaves a real decision coming into focus, one that could point toward a quarterback, a different cornerstone, or even a move down if the board and the market break the right way. Smith is the headline-grabbing option, but he may not be the most consequential one. [Read more 🡒]
Malik Willis Just Added More Tension To A Brutal Dolphins Loss
The Dolphins loss to Cincinnati already had enough frustration attached to it, and Malik Willis added another layer of noise afterward. Bengals safety Jordan Battle came away with two interceptions and seven tackles in the game, then suggested he had picked up on a clue in Willis throwing motion that helped him jump routes.
Willis pushed back on that idea, saying he does not have a tell before he throws and pointing to other reasons for Battles interceptions. For Miami, it is the kind of postgame detail that lingers because it touches on execution, scouting and confidence all at once, with the final word in the back-and-forth still hanging in the air. [Read more 🡒]