The Dolphins have torn apart their roster in an effort to build a team. One important holdover could be the key to changing the culture.
Linebacker Jordyn Brooks.
He’s the player who had no qualms about calling the team “soft” after a 2024 Thanksgiving night embarrassment at Lambeau Field. He was even more candid about the past, present, and future in a recent conversation with Tyler Dunne of GoLongTD.com.
“If the team is playing soft, we’re playing soft,” Brooks told Dunne. “We’re not playing the way that we should be playing. Let’s call it what it is. We’re getting killed out here in the cold. We’re fitting right into the narrative. As a leader, that’s what you’re supposed to do.”
The issue with the Dolphins of recent years was a lack of true leadership from their supposed leaders.
“I don’t think you can be a leader because somebody says you are one,” Brooks told Dunne. “It’s a natural instinct — and people go about it in different ways — but it’s a natural instinct to get something done: No, we’ve got to get it done. . . .
“It came to a point where I realized, ‘OK, some of these guys aren’t serious about this, and we are suffering behind it. I can’t just sit here and just let it go by. Showing up late to meetings. Not buying into what we’re trying to do. We play football. If enough guys are not all the way locked in, we’re going to suffer. Basketball team, 15 guys, it’s a lot easier to get everybody to buy in. Whoever isn’t bought in is going to stick out like a sore thumb. But it’s easier to hide when it’s 50, 60 guys.”
The team’s struggles in the cold weren’t the disease. They were the symptom. Miami’s Super Bowl-winning teams of 50-plus years ago won wherever, whenever. In whatever conditions they faced.
During our offseason interviews with new coach Jeff Hafley and new G.M. Jon-Eric Sullivan, that message was unmistakable. It’s not about finding players who can play in the cold. It’s about finding players who can play under all types of weather. Under any type of circumstances.
That’s the culture they’re trying to instill. And Brooks was, by all appearances, the outlier in recent years. Now, he could be the lightning rod.
“My true value is to be a leader of men,” Brooks said. “We’ve got a bunch of rookies. I’ve got a lot of knowledge that I can give them through my own experience that can help them be more successful. That’s my true value. . . . I went through all those lows for these moments.”
The Dolphins will be relying heavily on young, cheap players in 2026 (and 2027), thanks to the massive financial consequences of the disastrous market-is-the-market contract given to former starting quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. (The Dolphins will pay him more than $50 million this year to play for the Falcons.)
Brooks believes the culture change can change everything.
“I know a lot of people look at it like, ‘Man, I’m not trying to be part of no rebuild,’” Brooks said. “But look at it the right way. Nobody said a rebuild has to be three years. It can be three months. They drafted a lot of great dudes that are going to be stars in the league. . . . Who knows man? The Miami Dolphins might surprise a lot of people this year.”
It’s not just idle talk. Brooks can feel the difference.
“A lot of people on the outside are going to look at our team and be like, ‘Yeah, 0-17,’” Brooks said. “But me? When you’re in it, it’s different. You never have that mindset. I understand why people would say the things they say. ‘How many stars do they have? Proven guys?’ We ain’t got a lot of them. But we tried that and it didn’t work. To me, this is exactly what we need. Whatever the vision is, I’m all-in. The best teams win. Not the best players.”
He’s right. Great teams perform in a way that allows specific players to be perceived as great. With 10 teammates on the field, it’s very hard for one player to stand out, if the other 10 aren’t fully committed.
Commitment was the issue in the past. Dunne’s article includes comments from unnamed former Dolphins players who painted a troubling picture about the attitude of some of the team’s captains. The status apparently was based on past production, not true leadership.
“Nobody respected the guys with the Cs on their chest, because they didn’t give a fuck,” an unnamed player told Dunne. “They made some crazy plays. Jalen [Ramsey] is one of the most talented, gifted athletes I’ve ever seen. Obviously, Tyreek [Hill] is. But other young players follow them. And watch them. And see how they do things.”
If players see enough of certain things, they’ll get to the point where they’ve seen enough.
“We didn’t fight for each other on the field,” a former Dolphins player told Dunne. “We just didn’t give a fuck. Offense didn’t care about the defense. Defense didn’t care about the offense. That’s how it went. I stopped giving a fuck.”
Dunne’s article places plenty of blame on former coach Mike McDaniel. An offensive starter said McDaniel “was just too much of a bro” and lost control of the locker room.
McDaniel tried to get things under control after G.M. Chris Grier was fired and McDaniel was given a chance to save his whistle. He benched Tagovailoa after a Monday night loss in Pittsburgh.
By then, it was too late. The Dolphins needed a full reset. The most encouraging sign moving forward is the presence of a G.M. and head coach who are fully aligned. That limits the possibility of dysfunction settling in once adversity arrives.
And if they’ve made the right decisions as to the players they’ve dropped, the players they’ve kept, and the players they’ve added, the perpetually underachieving collection of stars could be replaced by a group of unknown players who will become stars if the collection of them performs like a team.
