I’ve been doing various iterations of opponent previews for years now, with 2025’s focus being on myriad statistical trends. With this being the second time the Buffalo Bills have faced off against the Miami Dolphins in 2025, I thought it would be interesting to mirror my analysis from seven weeks ago. At the time I asked the question “Are the Dolphins good at anything?” and concluded that the answer was “no.”
You’ve likely taken the hint from the headline that I think they’re an improving team compared to last time. Does that mean I’ve changed my answer though? Here’s the piece from earlier in the season in case you want to cross-reference and give me more clicks.
Let’s take a look at the current state of things. We’ll use the same lens of “are the Dolphins good at anything.” When it comes to rushing offense the answer is “no, not really.” Worse, contrary to my assertion in the headline they’ve gotten worse not better. In Week 3 Miami had three play directions in which they were top third of the league in average gain. That included a third-best ranking running behind the left guard. Now only runs off the right tackle are top third of the league.
The run defense seems to have gotten worse too. Back in Week 3 they had three zones in the top third of the league just like their offensive side of the ball. That’s fallen to zero. Worse, I noted I couldn’t conclude they had a “good” run defense thanks to an atrocious 31st rank in defensing runs off the left guard. That’s technically improved to 30th place, but we both know that’s only a technical shift, not a real one.
The passing game has a little more hope for Dolphins fans. Miami is pretty good completing passes to the short right, with a 75% completion rate. They’re borderline elite in passes to the deep middle part of the field when it comes to not only completion rate (67%) but also average gain. The disclaimer in that zone is that they’ve had fewer passes there than just about anyone else and, as a result of there being only three passes there, it’s hard to see any of that data as meaningful. On the other hand, the average gain for those short middle passes is a legitimate positive.
In the review leading up to Week 3, there were a fair few more bright spots, so in this area too they’re doing worse than before. Let’s check in on the defense.
The defense only has one real bright spot from the chart. For deep left passes they allow an average completion rate, but a lower-than-average yards per pass. The deep middle information is a fraud thanks to only two passes being attempted in that direction.
The pass defense has shifted from Week 3 to now, but I wouldn’t call it better or worse necessarily based on these charts. At that time, they had a couple zones of the field where they allowed low completion rates, but that was tempered by mediocre average gains per pass.
League average comparisons
I’m only going to key in on a couple stats for these as the general theme from last time is still true. Remember red on offense is bad and the Dolphins are mostly red. On defense “not red” is bad and the Dolphins have a lot of “not red.”
For yards per play, the Dolphins are now 20th in the league (average) and in the red… which is really bad for my headline about the Dolphins getting better because after Week 2 they had a better-than-average yards-per-play metric. This shift is in large part due to the same thing happening in the passing game. They were +0.38 compared to the rest of the league and are now -0.56, which is a huge change in the wrong direction.
On defense, I’ll spare you too many details. They had precious little in the red and that remains the same. So why the heck am I claiming they’re a better team than before when pretty much every measure shows the exact opposite?
Remember one of my favorite Skare-isms; The only stat that matters is the score, everything else is just context.
Leading up to the Week 3 contest, the Dolphins were scoring 5.3 points less than league average. Now it’s 3.4 below, nearly a two-point shift in the right direction. That’s factoring in league ranking too. If you look at just the Dolphins, they went from 17.5 points per game to 20, a shift of 2.5 points.
On defense it’s more drastic. They’re allowing 27 points per game now, while it was at 33 points prior to the first matchup. Looking at a comparison to the league trends, they had been giving up 10 points more than league average before. That’s down to 3.6 difference compared to the other teams.
I want to be clear on things. On offense, that ranks them as the 26th team in the league on offense and the 25th on defense. Per my rule of four, both of those are in the “bad” ranking. In other words, the Dolphins are still not good at anything per the metrics, they’re just less horrific.
That makes plenty of sense too, as the prior article was only factoring in two games of data and it’s easier to have volatility in such a small sample size. Now that the season is about half over, the more stable data for the Dolphins is better than the volatile data set, but still not good.
Last time I came to this conclusion I got a little heat for coming across as arrogant so I’ll add that the Dolphins put a hurting on the Atlanta Falcons, one of teams to have handed the Bills a loss. Miami can come away with a win in Week 10, but on paper it’s clear that Buffalo should be favored.
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