Dave Hyde: Phillips gone; who's next? And what's the Dolphins' plan now?

Dave Hyde, South Florida Sun Sentinel on Nov 4, 2025

Published in Football

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Well, that didn’t take long, did it?

Chris Grier had barely cleaned out his office, and work has begun cleaning up the larger mess.

Philadelphia gets Jaelan Phillips, one of the good guys, in its quest for another Super Bowl. The Miami Dolphins get a third-round pick in their quest to make chicken salad from this failed season.

And so begins what every Dolphins fan feared last offseason, suspected at the 0-3 start, decided by 1-5 and had hammered home by Thursday night’s embarrassment against the Baltimore Ravens before a Hard Rock Stadium crowd of more than half Ravens fans.

Another rebuild officially is upon us.

Smoke ’em, if you got ’em. This will take a while.

The New England Patriots have six Super Bowl trophies this new millennium. The Dolphins kicked off their sixth rebuild in that time with Monday’s trade of Phillips. It’s their identity. The previous, failed architects were Nick Saban, Bill Parcells, Mike Tannenbaum, Brian Flores/Chris Grier, Chris Grier/Mike McDaniel and … now, who?

Who will be in charge?

Or, more immediately, what’s the plan to put someone in charge? And is it a good plan? A plan that takes into account all the past mistakes?

That’s the first question for team owner Steve Ross now. What’s the process for putting someone in charge? You can see this moving in any direction from here, even listlessly out to sea if the tide takes them there.

Ross wants to keep Mike McDaniel if this season doesn’t collapse completely. That’s not because he considers McDaniel a championship coach. It’s in good part because McDaniel might be the only coach wanting quarterback Tua Tagovailoa right now, and to release Tua after this season means writing him a $99.2 million check for nothing.

Yep, listlessly out to sea is a possibility.

If McDaniel and Tua return, that shrinks the pool of potential general manager candidates. A rising star might not want to tie a career to a coach who hasn’t won and a quarterback with health and athletic limitations.

Or maybe Ross just hands the keys to interim general manager Champ Kelly and has him take a test drive for a year. He has the first name for the job, and an extensive past through front offices at Denver, Chicago and Las Vegas before coming to the Dolphins earlier this year.

The question right now isn’t Kelly. It’s the specter of McDaniel and Tua being thrust on the next general manager. Is this any way to run an NFL team?

Ross should clean house right now,. That means McDaniel should go, and an interim coach named to go with the interim general manager. That would start this rebuild properly, meaning whoever the next coach and general manager are they would start together and not be an arranged, shotgun wedding like Ross always has done things for the past 16 years.

Cleaning house completely would allow Ross to get started on searching for replacements now rather than wait, too. Why wouldn’t he want to talk to a coach like Lane Kiffin, who has somehow built a winner at Mississippi, has experience grooming NFL quarterbacks and has NFL head-coaching experience on his resume?

Why wouldn’t he want to talk to Alonzo Highsmith as a possible general manager after he’s helped build winners at Green Bay, Seattle and now New England?

This isn’t backing either of them for the jobs. It’s just showing Ross can’t talk to a coach if he’s considering keeping McDaniel, and he can’t offer a general manager a fair shake if the coach and quarterback are inherited parts of the deal.

Ross needs to do some self-scouting on why his football moves keep failing so completely. The results on the field are as consistent as the revolving door at the offices of coach and general manager.

Meanwhile, there’s today’s question of who gets traded next, if anyone, before Tuesday’s deadline. Phillips was at the end of his contract, and he is a tricky re-sign, considering his serious injuries the past two years. So you understand why he was traded.

Veteran edge rusher Bradley Chubb is a possibility to trade, though his one-year contract is laden with so many incentives it muddles the situation as much as his past injuries.

Jaylen Waddle? The Dolphins would have to receive something more than in the Phillips to trade their top receiver. That’s because Waddle’s salary-cap hit is a relatively modest $8 million this year and $11.7 million next year.

So, why not wait until at least the offseason to consider trading him? Then he can be fit into the rebuilding plan’s timeline. Assuming there is a plan in place by then other than the outgoing tide.

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