The Miami Dolphins don’t look like the powerful offensive team everyone expected. Three weeks into the season, the Dolphins look like a team destined for a Top 5 draft pick in 2025.

There was plenty of blame to go around against the Bills, and the win against the Jaguars wasn’t without its concerns. In Week 3, the Dolphins looked utterly lost. Now, fans can’t hide their concerns anymore, and it goes far beyond the loss of Tua Tagovailoa. The Dolphins are not good.

If the Dolphins want to improve and get better, they need to wake up fast. The level of play is not good enough. In this piece, we look at three guys who struggled against Seattle, but we also point out three playmakers who deserve no blame at all:

Calais Campbell had a sack in Week 1 and another in Week 3. Campbell is not showing his age. The Dolphins haven’t made many big moves this past offseason, but signing Campbell has paid off big time so far.

Campbell and Zach Sieler play well together and they will only get better as the season progresses. The more they play next to each other, the better they can anticipate each other’s moves on the field. Sieler has become a leader on the Dolphins’ defense and the team as a whole.

There’s no way to sugarcoat it. Skylar Thompson’s play to close out the Bills game and his start against the Seahawks were both brutal. Whatever the Dolphins saw in camp needs to be reevaluated. Thompson was marginally better than Mike White, but against Seattle, fans wondered how bad White would have been instead.

Thompson’s injury was an insult to his era. He couldn’t consistently generate positive plays, couldn’t consistently drive the ball, and worst of all, the Seahawks didn’t have to do much to confuse him. The Dolphins won’t let Thompson go, but there’s no reason he should be on the team in 2025. If he is, Stephen Ross should fire his general manager. It’s one thing to lose due to inexperience, but this is his third season in this system and, like McDaniel’s play-calling, nothing has changed.

When De’Von Achane got drafted, McDaniel celebrated in the draft room. Achane had been injured early in his rookie season, but it looked like he could explode in the NFL—2024 was supposed to be his coming-out party, the year he shows the NFL he’s one of the best. The problem so far? McDaniel’s play-calling hasn’t done him any favors.

In Week 3, Achane was a bright spot in an otherwise terrible game. He ran 11 times for just 30 yards. Most of the time, he was put in a bad position behind an offensive line that couldn’t block. He caught three passes for 25 yards. Why isn’t he used more?

With Tagovailoa out, McDaniel should have called for a run-heavy offense, but he didn’t. Achane is a playmaker, and the more carries he gets, the better he is. Unfortunately, the game in Seattle was another waste of his talent.

Who do you point to along the offensive line? You could probably point to five, one for each player. The line was terrible, but the worst part wasn’t the lack of pass protection, it was the lack of discipline. False starts are not uncommon in Seattle, but the Dolphins were penalized for holds, illegal formations, and yes, false starts. In total, there were 11 penalties in this game against the Dolphins offense. That is unacceptable.

McDaniel said the phrase in his postgame press conference, but maybe we shouldn’t hold it against them. Most of them wouldn’t start on other teams. They need to get better fast if the Dolphins want to turn their season around. The lack of discipline is obvious and it needs to change. Butch Barry needs to make that right before they play the Titans at home in Week 4.

No matter how well you put together a game plan, if the players don’t execute it, it won’t work. That’s the saving grace for most head coaches, but not for McDaniel. The Dolphins’ head coach, as we’ve said, is not part of the solution, but part of the problem.

Fans believe that McDaniel needs to retire from play-calling duties 100 percent, and nothing he’s done so far this year has convinced anyone that he’s capable of calling the game. McDaniel’s game plan against Seattle was baffling because it was like he spent 10 days whining about losing his starting quarterback.

Nothing McDaniel did against Seattle worked, and he can’t blame it all on the players. He had a rushing game that showed signs of life, but insisted his backup quarterbacks throw the ball despite their inability to do so accurately. When the game needed to be adjusted, McDaniel again failed to make decisions that worked.

Fans were on social media en masse late in the first half, blasting McDaniel for a play-action fake when the only call to be made was a Hail Mary, which seemed like something a high school coach would do. Not sending a player to the end zone for a Hail Mary was also nonsense.