MIAMI GARDENS — This probably isn’t what you want to hear, not on a day like this, but it is what you need to hear.
De’Von Achane has played his last snap for the Miami Dolphins this season. Torn ACL. As ugly a pairing of words as there is in football. It robs the young man of one of the finite number of seasons he has to play this game. And it stinks.
And yet, the season isn’t over. It has barely begun. Remember what we all agreed (or should have agreed) this season was about? That part about laying a foundation, so that when results start to go the Dolphins’ way, it won’t come crumbling down like it has before? Has anything about the marching orders for 2026 changed?
Actually, in one important way, they have, only probably not the way you’re
thinking.
While you may have been fretting about Achane’s injury, the Dolphins were in a one-score game against a title-contending team despite Miami being without its best player, its best player’s backup and, briefly, its best player’s backup to the backup.
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They were a hair away from having every reason to bellyache about a terrible roughing-the-passer call/rule (take your pick) that flipped the tide in Kansas City’s favor in a 24-10 Miami defeat. And even though the Dolphins fell to 0-3, they did so earning the respect of a guy who in a couple of years might break Don Shula’s record for wins.
“My hat goes off to the Dolphins and the job in which they did,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said, perfect queen’s English and all. “Jeff’s (coach Jeff Hafley) done a nice job with that group. They’re a young group, like we are, and they fly around. We knew it’d be four quarters of football and that’s what it took.”
Andy Reid tells Jeff Hafley Dolphins played hard
Reid said that to reporters, but check out what he told Hafley face to face.
“The one thing I mentioned to him was his guys play hard and they play hard every snap,” Reid said. “That means they’re listening and trusting him and that’s a positive that he can build on and he’ll do that. He’s a sharp guy and he’s got a good staff.”
Just down the hallway of the underbelly of Hard Rock Stadium, on the home team’s side, nobody wanted to use the term moral victory any more than “rebuilding year.” But everyone agreed this was an afternoon in which the cement was poured and the curing process had begun on the foundation.
“One hundred percent,” Jacob Rodriguez said.
“One hundred percent,” Jordyn Brooks said.
These two Texas Tech linebackers don’t have the time or the taste for false narratives. They had barely quit sweating from a game that, with six minutes left, was one big play away from being tied. If, after watching the game, you’re still of the belief this team could go 0-17, you weren’t paying attention. It will win some — maybe not as many as it would like, but some — and it will knock off some team when you least expect it. Sort of like this past weekend.
“That’s the part that hurts the most, because it’s against, I think, one of the best teams in the NFL,” Hafley said. “It’s 14-7 and we have the ball and watching those young guys make those plays and just continue to fight back — it doesn’t feel great right now because I want to win in everything that we do. But I think if you look at the big picture, I think it just kind of shows you where we’re heading with some of these guys.”
You know which guys. Rodriguez, who covered most of the field in that helter-skelter diving interception against the great Patrick Mahomes and who started his career at a high level and is playing at a higher level already. Chris Bell. Caleb Douglas. Kadyn Proctor, who, if this were soccer, would have earned an assist on Ollie Gordon’s touchdown because he essentially tossed Gordon into the end zone.
“With the assist from KP … ,” Gordon said, “as a young guy, he’s very intelligent.”
Dolphins are the youngest team in the NFL
This is the youngest team in the NFL, the one with the most rookies and probably a dozen other “mosts” you could dig up with AI. Better to recognize it’s also a team smart enough to know football games don’t end after two minutes. Maybe, as a spectator, you were tempted to fear the worst a couple of minutes in. Mahomes completed a 48-yard pass on the first play. Tight end Travis Kelce couldn’t have gained more separation from the nearest defender had he run an out pattern to the missus at the Video Music Awards in L.A. Four snaps in, it was 7-0 and looking ugly.
Three carries by Achane on the next series, he was coming out for good. It was looking uglier.
Yet on that same series, Miami drove 91 yards in 17 plays, eating up 9:27, while Proctor decided that Gordon looked better in the end zone than on the 1. You’d have to go back to the previous century for the last time the Dolphins opened with a drive that dominant in terms of number of plays and time elapsed. Plus, they converted three third downs.
So the fight was on, which — there’s no such thing as too many reminders on this part — that’s really what matters right now.
“You’ve got to be process over result,” Rodriguez said. “The result today is that we lost, but there’s a process of which that we go by where you have to just do your job and do it to the best of your ability every day. … Even though we lost, and as hard as that is to deal with, we got better today and we came together as a team and we played better football.
“Now that is the floor. We have to start there every week and we have to continue to get better. But I loved what I saw from my team.”
Someday, as bleak as things seem with the Achane news, you may look back on this game and like what it represents, too.
Hal Habib covers the Miami Dolphins for The Palm Beach Post. He can be reached at HHabib@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: De'Von Achane is out for season but Miami Dolphins rebuild continues
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