The Miami Dolphins dropped their third straight contest to open the 2025 NFL season \u2014 certainly not the start anyone hoped for.<\/p>\n
When your team looks headed for a lost season, expectations shift. For me personally, I want to see how the young players on Miami\u2019s roster perform throughout the year in order to assess if they\u2019re building blocks for the future. One such youngster had himself a heck of a game on Thursday night, and has earned more playing time as the season unfolds as well as earning Week Three\u2019s Most Valuable \u2018Phin award from yours truly!<\/p>\n
Ollie Gordon was a sixth-round selection of the Miami Dolphins in the 2025 NFL Draft after having an accomplished college career. His play during the preseason opened a lot of eyes around the league, however his usage during the first couple of weeks of the season had plenty of folks questioning why Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel wasn\u2019t utilizing Gordon\u2019s skillset more.<\/p>\n
That changed on Thursday night when Gordon was fed the ball 9 times, allowing him to run for 38 yards (4.2 yards per carry) and his first touchdown as a professional. More importantly, Gordon picked up multiple first downs in short-yardage situations \u2014 something the Dolphins have struggled with during Mike McDaniel\u2019s entire tenure as the head coach in South Florida. Gordon was Pro Football Focus\u2019 highest graded Dolphins player on Thursday Night Football (81.2).<\/p>\n
Hopefully the former Oklahoma State product\u2019s impressive performance has earned the young ball-carrier more playing time, as a duo of De\u2019Von Achane and Gordon II could provide the Miami Dolphins that speed and power combination needed to succeed in today\u2019s NFL.<\/p>\n
Week One – RB De\u2019Von Achane<\/p>\n
Week Two – WR\/PR Malik Washington<\/p>\n
Week Three – RB Ollie Gordon II<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Miami Dolphins dropped their third straight contest to open the 2025 NFL season \u2014 certainly not the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2049],"tags":[217,7,216,251,2733,2737,2087,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-390164","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-miami-dolphins","8":"tag-dolphins","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-miami","11":"tag-miami-dolphins","12":"tag-miami-dolphins-news","13":"tag-miami-dolphins-roster","14":"tag-miamidolphins","15":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115252714855846013","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}