The Miami Dolphins are using their bye week to catch their breath, but there’s still plenty going on around a team that started the year as the league’s youngest and built its roster around rookies and second-year players. With a 12-week stretch waiting when they return, the break feels less like a pause and more like a reset button.
One of the players at the center of that youth movement is Kenneth Grant, Miami’s 2025 first-round pick. Grant missed the first four games because of a toe injury before getting back on the field last week in a loss to the Cincinnati Bengals.
The Dolphins didn’t throw him straight into the deep end, either. He logged 16 snaps, which was 25 percent of Miami’s defensive plays, as the team worked him back gradually.
Grant, though, is already looking ahead. Through The Palm Beach Post’s Joe Schad, he laid out where he wants his game to go next.
“Just get better, get better from last season,” Grant said of his 2026 goal. “Be dominant, be dominating in the run and pass game, and get a lot of wins for this team.” …
Grant has also visibly trimmed down this season, but the job description from his point of view hasn’t changed. He wants to be the kind of force on the interior who can eat up bodies and make life easier for the linebackers behind him, Jacob Rodriguez and Jordyn Brooks.
“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.”
Around the Dolphins, there’s also a steady drumbeat of conversation about how this season could still unfold from here, including the question of whether Miami can find its way to five wins. Chris Perkins of the South Florida Sun Sentinel says he still believes the rebuilding Dolphins will get there, even after the rocky start.
On the bigger-picture side, Alain Poupart of Miami Dolphins on SI argued that the meaning of the season was never going to be limited to the record, noting that Miami’s 0-5 start hasn’t changed the broader view of what this year is about.
There’s also movement at wide receiver, where Jake Gibson of Miami Dolphins on SI noted the possibility of some fresh faces helping out an offense that has already had its share of struggles. That includes Jared Wayne and a new wave of tryout players, with room potentially opening up for veterans looking to make an impression.
And in the fan conversation, Kevin Nogle of The Phinsider is asking readers to weigh in on the first quarter of the 2026 season, including a look at Malik Willis’s grade and overall confidence level.
In Other News...
Dolphins Defensive Tackle Move Says Plenty About This Thin Room
The Dolphins have been busy shuffling the edges of a defensive tackle room that has little room for comfort, and Mazi Smith was the latest name to come and go. The former Cowboys first-round pick had been claimed off waivers earlier in the season, then added to Miamis practice squad after being activated earlier in the month, a sequence that underscored how quickly the team has been trying to sort out depth inside.
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 🡒]
Dolphins Face A Draft Dilemma Bigger Than Jeremiah Smith
Miamis draft conversation already feels bigger than one blue-chip receiver. Sitting third in the 2027 order, the Dolphins are in a position that could reshape the franchise, and ESPNs Football Power Index has them with a 49 percent chance to wind up with the No. 1 overall pick. That kind of draft capital invites fantasies about Ohio State star Jeremiah Smith, but it also forces a wider look at what actually changes a teams ceiling.
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 🡒]