The Miami Dolphins\u2019 season did not go as planned, largely because their roster didn\u2019t meet expectations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now that the team is turning the page with GM Jon-Eric Sullivan and HC Jeff Hafley, we\u2019re taking one last look back at the 2025 roster and mostly grading players who played meaningful snaps.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re going position by position to grade every player based on the film study we did during the season and their expectations. We\u2019ve already done the quarterbacks<\/a>, running backs<\/a>, and receivers<\/a>, so it\u2019s time to do the tight ends.<\/p>\n Darren Waller\u00a0<\/p>\n Waller is another Dolphins player who\u2019s a bit difficult to grade because of injuries. Waller missed eight games in 2025, and he left the game against the Cleveland Browns after running just seven routes.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, Waller was quite good when he was on the field. He caught 24 of his 34 targets for 286 yards and six touchdowns. Waller\u2019s EPA per target of 0.84 would be the league\u2019s best mark among pass catchers, if Waller played enough games to qualify.\u00a0<\/p>\n He was awesome in the red zone and was practically the only player on the team capable of high-pointing a pass and coming down it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Given the Dolphins traded for Waller out of retirement, nine games of solid play feel like a win.\u00a0<\/p>\n Grade: B<\/p>\n Greg Dulcich\u00a0<\/p>\n Dulcich didn\u2019t run more than 10 routes in a single game until Week 9, and he managed to finish fourth on the team in receptions (26) and third in yards (335).\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s pretty impressive for a player who began the season on the practice squad. Dulcich was a huge winner from the Dolphins using more heavy personnel in the second half of last season.\u00a0<\/p>\n Miami used a lot of play-action passes out of those looks, and Dulcich was running free in the short area of the field quite a bit. He\u2019s just 25, so the Dolphins should try to get him back this coming season.\u00a0<\/p>\n He\u2019s probably not a long-term TE1, but he\u2019s easily a good TE2 and productive player.\u00a0<\/p>\n Grade: A<\/p>\n Julian Hill\u00a0<\/p>\n Hill caught a lot of flak from Dolphins fans during the 2024 season, but he quietly got better toward the end of the season. He mostly carried that over into 2025, becoming a pretty solid blocking tight end for the Dolphins.\u00a0<\/p>\n Hill also had a career high of 15 catches and 140 yards this past season. Those numbers aren\u2019t impressive on their own, but Hill wasn\u2019t given many pass-catching responsibilities this past season.\u00a0<\/p>\n He can still have blocks where he doesn\u2019t sustain long enough, and there are others where his timing on double teams is a little rough. But he\u2019s become a lot more consistent player, and someone capable of being Miami\u2019s long-term blocking tight end.\u00a0<\/p>\n That feels like a win, given how badly things looked for him in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n Grade: B-<\/p>\n Tanner Conner\u00a0<\/p>\n Conner did not finish the season with the Dolphins, but he played in nine games this past season, so it feels a bit odd to leave him off the list.\u00a0<\/p>\n He finished the season with nine catches on 15 targets for 91 yards. Conner had a golden opportunity during the first three weeks of the season while Waller was injured to make a huge impact.\u00a0<\/p>\n That didn\u2019t happen, as Conner struggled to become a part of the passing offense and win his assignments in the running game. Conner is, unfortunately, an example of the last staff\u2019s faults.\u00a0<\/p>\n He was a pet project for head coach Mike McDaniel that the team stuck with far too long. Conner was cut from the team, and Dulcich\u2019s success immediately proved how well a better player could fill that role.\u00a0<\/p>\n Conner signed a future contract with the New York Giants, so his time in Miami is almost certainly up.\u00a0<\/p>\n Grade: F <\/p>\n More Miami Dolphins Coverage<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Miami Dolphins\u2019 season did not go as planned, largely because their roster didn\u2019t meet expectations.\u00a0 Now that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":721673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2049],"tags":[217,7,216,251,2087,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-721672","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-miamidolphins","13":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115996085754880025","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721672","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=721672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/721673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=721672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=721672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=721672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}