The Dolphins are the most important team to get right for 2025 fantasy football
The Jonnu trade makes them the "perfect storm" team
You guys asked for more “perfect storm” content after I wrote a piece around this time last year talking about some situations I was seeing in my projections research where everything could move one direction and create some really exciting things. One of the things with stuff like that is it’s organic, meaning I can’t just generate it because I want to. There were even a few situations I added to that piece last year to try to give it some weight, that I think didn’t really belong.
I wrote that piece because I wanted to talk about the trends around Bijan Robinson and the Falcons, and then I also had a similar feeling about the Broncos’ RBs with Bo Nix taking over and how many targets they might see. Those were the two main ones, even if I didn’t present them first (to be honest, I started talking about the Chiefs because I wanted to move the other stuff below the paywall).
As a quick review, for the Broncos’ RBs, the target stuff hit what I’d think of as a very low-end outcome, like 10th percentile, considering that by the latter part of the year they were still throwing to a player out of the backfield but they hated all their RBs so much that the player was a WR, Marvin Mims. One of my specific points there was if Nix played the whole season, I would “be shocked if the Broncos don’t finish top five in RB targets.” By my numbers, they still finished fourth in the league, even in a season where it felt like they didn’t utilize that at all (and then let their highest-utilized RB walk, drafted an RB in Round 2, and signed a moderately high-profile RB to create a new 1-2 punch and completely replace last year’s backfield).
But the point of the writeup was that the upside in the situation felt like the Broncos could not only finish first in RB targets, but totally gap the rest of the teams. The point of my Bijan notes was how concentrated things could look, as people felt Tyler Allgeier would play a far more significant role than he did. That was pretty spot on, as was some of my best-ball-specific discussion about how Darnell Mooney and at the time Rondale Moore were good “back stack” candidates for Kirk Cousins because of how they could really consolidate routes for a WR going in the later rounds. Moore obviously got hurt in the preseason, and I did mention the guy who instead became the 500-route slot receiver, Ray-Ray McCloud, in that piece. McCloud wasn’t good, but he did produce some, and would have been a fine late-round best ball pick purely on the routes; Mooney was a good pick at cost by just being pretty solid, because of that consolidation of routes.
That Chiefs’ section was about how pass-heavy Kansas City always is in terms of PROE, and why I thought they could get back to being a fun passing offense with their investment in pass-catching weapons. That didn’t really work, but like the Broncos RB receiving notes, I do think there’s some potential 2025 carryover here. After major injuries last year, they expect Rashee Rice back, have Xavier Worthy heading into his age-22, second season, and brought back Hollywood Brown, while also adding one of the more underrated Day 3 WR prospects in this class in Jalen Royals and a potentially dynamic pass-catching rookie RB in Brashard Smith, who is already getting comps to Jerick McKinnon, the guy whose 56-catch, 512-yard, 9-touchdown receiving season was a huge part of Patrick Mahomes’ last great passing season in 2022 as a “run-game-extension” element out of the backfield.
So anyway, that was the idea of the post, and while I think the results were mixed in 2024, I do think it was an interesting way to present things because of how it zeroes in on upside, and often the kinds of things that feel like they can extend to ranges that are unprojectable and unique. When I heard from you guys about how much you liked that stuff, I was in agreement that it’s a fun type of content I wanted to do more of, and I intended to this year.
I’ll keep looking for more of it in July, but I have one and only one situation to discuss today. A big part of why I made it it’s own piece is there are a ton of key elements that all point in that “perfect storm” direction, such that I’ve written about 5,000 words below breaking it all down.
I think the market is misunderstanding Jonnu Smith’s 2024 usage, Tua Tagovailoa’s unique quarterback profile, and what Mike McDaniel has done as a coach since taking over the Dolphins. Because of that misunderstanding, I think this is a massive opportunity. Let’s break down everything I’m seeing that argues one or more of 2025’s biggest league-winners will come from Miami.
Misunderstanding Jonnu’s usage
When I say the market is misunderstanding Jonnu’s 2024 usage, what I mean is that it’s been basically ignored, or cast aside as only significant through the brokenness of Miami’s 2024 season. And yes, things went bad quickly in Miami, with Tua suffering a concussion late in Week 2 that would cost him the next four games, and an offensive line that played very poorly.
To the line issue, Terron Armstead was still a highly-graded tackle who has since retired, so there are real concerns things won’t be incredibly improved, though the Dolphins did draft a tackle 37th overall in the early second round, as well as sign a depth tackle and also a highly-graded guard. That guard is James Daniels, who comes over from Pittsburgh, though he tore his Achilles in Week 4 last year, so it’s unclear whether his play will take a hit. (The injury was early enough, starting his rehab process before the end of the season, that the timeline reportedly has him expected to be ready for training camp, and apparently definitely for Week 1, so that’s a positive to hear.)
So while an improved offensive line could be helpful, and simply staying healthier this year could be pretty big (Armstead for example missed two games and left five others early, including three where he played below 50% of the snaps), there are still probably some concerns there.
But it’s not purely the OL that created the splits we saw with Miami’s passing game. Those splits largely refer to how Miami used a quick-hitting perimeter passing game as a run-game extension, and that’s been referred to as “gimmicky,” and highlighted as necessary due to the offensive line issues (i.e. Miami needed to throw quick to the perimeter because they couldn’t protect Tua or block for the running backs inside the box).
That just doesn’t track. One of the major splits was De’Von Achane’s 6.1 receptions per game in the 11 games Tua played, with just 1.8 in the six games Tua missed (in addition to the four early in the year, Tua also sat Weeks 17 and 18 after the Dolphins were eliminated). I’m using receptions and not targets because this split is largely driven by that specific quick-hitting usage that manifests in a really high catch rate.
Not only was Achane’s target volume different in Tua games, but his catch rate for the season hit an absurd 89.7%, third in the league among RBs (a position with notoriously high catch rates due to the nature of their targets largely coming right near the line of scrimmage). But Achane’s catch rate was even higher in Tua games, and in the games Tua missed, his rate was below 80%. So it wasn’t just that Achane saw more receiving volume, but also that he caught basically every pass Tua threw him.
So this visual from the RotoViz Game Splits App is your reflection of how much of Achane’s receiving role was those quick-hitting passes to the perimeter. Those same types of plays were significant in Jonnu’s breakout season, and as we know his production was back-weighted where he posted double-digit PPR points in each of his final eight games, with 19+ in five of those, after starting the season with a stretch across the first four games where he caught just 9 passes on 13 targets.
This progression in his usage is often cited as evidence his quick-hitting volume was the product of a lost season and things not going to plan, but I said this doesn’t track because the Achane receiving stuff was there in the gameplan from Week 1, and it actually disappeared very early in the season when Tua was concussed right away in Week 2 and missed four of the first six games. During this stretch, the Dolphins went away from the perimeter passing, and instead ran a more traditional offense with a heavier run rate (in Tyler Huntley’s first three starts, Weeks 4, 5, and 7, Miami had a called pass rate below 50%, their only three such games of the year; Huntley would also start Weeks 17 and 18 and Miami was more pass heavy then).
Jonnu did sort of start to come on during that stretch, particularly with a 7-7-96-1 game in Indianapolis in Week 7 after the Week 6 bye (with Huntley and Tim Boyle splitting QB duties). But overall, he was significantly better in Tua games vs. non-Tua games.
The catch rate isn’t listed, but Jonnu caught over 80% of his targets in Tua games, and then just under 75% in the non-Tua games. Notably, his aDOT in Tua games was 4.7; in non-Tua games it was a yard higher at 5.6 (Achane’s aDOT also tracked this trend, but it’s a harder thing to parse for a RB; it came in at -0.4 in Tua games vs. 0.2 in non-Tua games).
These numbers reflect what I saw watching Miami, and the key point I’m hypothesizing here: that the perimeter passing game was not a product of a broken Dolphins offense, but rather something they wanted in the offense intentionally. More directly, it was something they couldn’t actually run without Tua, which gets at Achane’s massive receiving splits, and why they immediately went away from that stuff when Tua missed time, prioritizing between-the-tackles stuff they supposedly didn’t have the offensive line to run.
And this gets to what makes Tua Tagovailoa unique among NFL QBs. There are two key points. The first is that he’s experienced a ton of concussions in a way that is legitimately very scary for his health. That’s the elephant in the room any time he’s discussed, and it does play in here. The second is that while Tua is largely a boring, average QB in a ton of ways, there’s one thing he does at maybe the highest level in the league. Both things create unique statistical upside for his skill players.