At a time when reports regarding the status of Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel for 2026 are conflicting, the status of defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver beyond 2025 remains equally uncertain.

If he’s back, Weaver has a clear message for the team’s next General Manager, whoever it may be: The personnel on defense needs to be set far sooner than it was in 2025.

“I think whatever we assemble as a group defensively, we need an opportunity to grow earlier,” Weaver told reporters on Tuesday. “We need these people to be brought together earlier than they were. A lot of the guys that we ended up playing with either got here at the start of training camp, were kind of hurt in training camp, missed some of camp, so a lot of the growth we were trying to do as a defense occurred early in the season. When you combine that with the youth movement we were trying to make, that’s what’s going to happen early. I think eventually it started to click for all of them in terms of what the expectation and what we were trying to get done, but we need to start to get that ball rolling earlier than August. . . .

“Our secondary was all new guys. You had the injuries to Kader Kohou and Storm Duck and some of those guys that had gotten a bunch of reps in the system. Even Kader in the spring, you knew he was about to take a jump, so we had to go through some growing pains early just as we learned each other and they learned the defense. In doing that, that’s why we had the bumps and bruises we had early. Now there’s no excuse for a week ago, right? We laid that egg and we’ve got to do right this week and make that right. But moving forward, we’ve got to make sure in the offseason, whoever is going to be a part of this, we need them here. We can’t be piecemealing this thing in August.”

It’s a valid point. It’s already hard enough to lay the foundation during the offseason program. If whatever progress has been made in helmets, jerseys, and shorts becomes undone by roster changes once training camp opens, it becomes even harder to hit the ground running when the real games start.

It may not be Weaver’s concern in 2026. It may not be McDaniel’s, either. But it’s one of the things the next G.M. needs to consider when building the 2026 version of the Miami Dolphins, a team that last won a playoff game 26 years ago — and that has been to the postseason only three times since Stephen Ross became the primary owner in 2009.