Last week, we took to Madden NFL 26 to try bringing the joys of tanking to a franchise that would consider it to be entirely unacceptable, the Pittsburgh Steelers, and helped return them to a place among the true Super Bowl contenders year in and year out. With one franchise rescued from the rut it had found itself in, it’s time to look to another fallen giant, albeit one with fewer highs and some lower lows of late, the Miami Dolphins.
Could a little intentional ineptitude be just what the Dolphins need to get back to their glory days, or will their greatest accomplishment every year continue being when the last team in the league loses a game?
Tearing It Partially Down
Miami is not far removed from a tank in the real world, having spent the better part of the 2010s stapled to the bottom half of the AFC East. While they did not beat the Bungles to the rights to draft certified stud Joe Burrow, the 5th pick in the 2020 draft was still enough to grab Alabama quarterback star Tua Tagovailoa.
While the full implosion strategy used in Pittsburgh is one that could work to roughly similar effect anywhere, as a complete roster purge and youth injection means little of the prior squad remains, the Dolphins pose a different challenge for two key reasons.
The first of those reasons is Tua. The ineptitude has largely paid off, with Tagovailoa turning in some strong performances and even transforming the team into one of the best offenses in the league under Mike McDaniel in the periods where Tua isn’t sidelined by another terrifying concussion. Combined with some other young players yet to reach their prime, the Dolphins have more pieces on the right side of 28 playing key roles for them.
The next important consideration is that the simulations will be run with real-world coaches, and McDaniel is a far less talented player developer than Steelers coach Mike Tomlin. With a man in charge who is less capable of helping all the young talent reach its maximum potential, there’s benefit to having a few established players still around the squad to provide guaranteed production for the draft to build around. With a coach who couldn’t turn Mason Rudolph and fifty ham sandwiches into a 9-8 wild card appearance, there is also less urgency in completely crippling the squad to guarantee a high pick.
Tanking For Tua Is Out, Tanking With Tua Is In
First on the docket is hitting the trade market and getting rid of anyone who does not fit the long-term goals of the squad. Rather than shipping anyone and everyone capable of getting a pick in the first two rounds in return, the sale was all about moving on players already in their primes.
If all goes well, the Dolphins should be ready to slam on the gas in just a few seasons, so while players in their late-20s are at their trading peak and likely to be on the downswing when the real fun starts, players in their mid-20s can hang around to crest right as the team takes off. They should be well-positioned to be the leaders in the draftees’ early years and transition to bit roles on the decline as the young kids progress.
This also led to a change in strategy on the buying side. With less valuable trade parts to unleash and a different short-term strategy, trades instead were used for a combination of acquiring more draft capital and also receiving younger stars than those being shipped out, building a core of young players to supplement through the draft. In addition to a three-headed aerial corps of Jalen Waddle, Tee Higgins, and George Pickens, given a chance to duke it out to be the star man in the not-too-distant future, and some strong defensive options, the Dolphins still brought in a strong crop of picks for the 2026 Draft:
- Cincinnati Bengals 1st
- Los Angeles Rams 1st
- Miami Dolphins 1st
- Miami Dolphins 2nd
- Dallas Cowboys 3rd
- Los Angeles Rams 3rd
- Miami Dolphins 3rd
- Cincinnati Bengals 3rd
- Arizona Cardinals 4th
- Miami Dolphins 4th
- Denver Broncos 5th
- Miami Dolphins 6th
- Arizona Cardinals 7th
- Miami Dolphins 7th
McDaniel Knows How To Lose Like A (Future) Winner
With only three first-round picks in the chamber, it was important for the first season of the tank to go to plan, and that means losing early and often. McDaniel and company handled the job with aplomb, winning just three games to lock down the first overall pick. This turned out to be particularly helpful as neither the Bengals nor Rams were committed to the cause, as each made the playoffs, pushing the Dolphins’ two new draft picks down into the middle of the round.
The crowning piece from year one was Clemson edge rusher T.J. Parker, with the Dolphins also looking to build the other side of their rush with Penn State’s Dani Dennis-Sutton. Should they pan out, it’s the start of a terrifying defense when this team begins to mature, while Ohio State tight end Max Klare comes in to supplement the strong receiver corps for Tua to target.
Loading Up For A Decade Of Dominance
While the Dolphins didn’t get stuffed with draft choices in the next few years, that didn’t mean that another year or two of ineptitude wasn’t in the plans, and with two more losing seasons, the restock was able to carry on according to plan.
The key piece coming in was another edge rusher, not offering promising signs for the team’s faith in Dennis-Sutton as they used the seventh pick to bring in Notre Dame’s Bryce Young with the hope he’d get off to a smoother NFL start than his more famous name-sharing peer in Carolina.
As for the core entering its prime as the future core enters the league, the big question was who would develop and hang around and who would ultimately fail to make the grade and be moved on. If you were betting on the guy labeled a flake to be the one to flame out in the WR room, good call, as Higgins and Waddle have grown to be a fearsome twosome for Tua to target, while George Pickens has grown to be a Los Angeles Charger.
The Quarterback Of The Far Future
Nothing is more important to a successful franchise than finding and keeping a star quarterback, and with this rebuild focused on supplementing Tua, there’s some good news and bad news for the virtual Dolphins.
The good news is the team has found precisely that, and it’s apparent the second you load up the rosters ten years into the future and see a bright and shiny 98 OVR starting under center. The bad news is it’s not Tua. Instead, it’s a man with 10 years of experience in Dylan Raiola. If you’re doing the simple math, yes, in a rebuild aimed at turning Tua into a Super Bowl-winning quarterback, the Dolphins drafted the actual star of the simulation in the first year the team was “ready to win.”
The worst news is they weren’t ready for that, either, despite having found a future Hall of Famer caliber quarterback in the draft, or having won 20 percent of the Defensive Rookie of the Year awards in the intervening decade to help build a terrifying unit on the other side of the ball. After 10 years with some of the best young defensive players and a stud under center, the Dolphins had won precisely nothing. No non-rookie awards. No Super Bowls. Not even an AFC Championship. The Dolphins remained who they’ve been pretty consistently since the end of the Dan Marino era: Irrelevant.
Is A Half Tank Worse Than No Tank?
With two tank simulations in the books, each carrying 3 years of tanking and 10 years of payoff, what do the results tell us? Based on these two runs, it certainly seems that committing fully to the tank is the way to go if you’re going to try it, at least if you aren’t also capable of developing young talent at an elite level. For the Steelers, the tanking season brought better results, with the same number of Super Bowl titles and two more AFC Championships in the post-tank years.
For the Dolphins, the tanking represented a regression, at least in terms of results. While the team appears to have all the pieces in place to potentially be a contender, McDaniel and crew never put it together and sat on dreadful approval ratings at the end of the simulation. What’s more, the non-tank Dolphins actually won a Super Bowl during the Steelers’ sim, something these ‘Phins never approached even with a stud.
The ammunition in this tank turned out to be a dud.
