Joe Schad & Hal Habib reveal their Dolphins at Colts Game Prediction & Bold Prediction
Joe Schad & Hal Habib reveal their Dolphins at Colts Game Prediction & Bold Prediction
- The Miami Dolphins have been one of the most injury-plagued teams in the NFL over the past few seasons.
- Since 2022, the Dolphins have spent over $44 million on players on injured reserve, ranking among the highest in the league.
- Despite the high injury rate, the Dolphins’ training staff was ranked first in the NFL by the players’ association for 2025.
Alec Ingold required help. His time with the Las Vegas Raiders had ended, so Ingold needed two things. First, he needed a contract, which came in the form of a two-year offer from the Miami Dolphins. Then, he needed assistance rehabilitating an ACL injury only four months prior to his signing.
The Dolphins’ training staff quickly learned that the team’s new fullback wasn’t just an early riser, he was the earliest of risers. They knew he liked to get in his workouts before meetings, before film sessions, before even waking up, if he could. Which explains the odd sight at the training facility in the predawn hours: trainers and Ingold armed with towels, wiping down the grass. There’s no mixing a player coming off knee surgery with early-morning dew.
“We’re all out there with towels,” Ingold said. “Made a whole contraption to get it off.”
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It’s that attention to detail, Ingold believes, that helped earn the Dolphins’ training staff the top ranking in the NFL Players Association’s poll of league players for 2025.
It also makes it all the more confounding, however, that even such dedication hasn’t been enough to turn around the Dolphins’ fortunes when it comes to injuries. Players and coaches have carved a cliche out of the phrase “the injury rate in the NFL is 100%,” yet as any avid Dolphins fan might tell you, not all 100 percenters seem to be created equally.
Since 2022, only five teams have taken a greater injury hit than Miami Dolphins
It’s not their (or your?) imagination: The Dolphins really have been hit with more debilitating injuries than nearly any other team the past few seasons.
Statistics compiled by Spotrac.com show that since 2022, only five teams have had more high-profile injuries than the Dolphins. The website calculated that the Dolphins have spent $44.5 million on players while on injured reserve in that span. The dollar figure means not only are the Dolphins absorbing more injuries than most but those injuries are sidelining their most valuable players.
The Detroit Lions top the list at $52.4 million since 2022, followed by Denver ($50.7 million) and Arizona ($49.5 million).
Dolphins fans know the details. It’s Tua Tagovailoa’s concussions. It’s the misfortune of Jaelan Phillips suffering season-ending leg injuries in back-to-back seasons, including 2024, which never even got off the ground for fellow edge rusher Bradley Chubb due to an ACL tear suffered late in 2023. Is it any wonder linebacker Willie Gay Jr. said, “I pray to God everyone can stay healthy, man, and we can use everybody’s ability, because we’re loaded up front”?
While those rank among the highest-profile players lost, the impact of other injuries should not be overlooked, especially when they’re concentrated on one position group. The 2023 season, for example, was brutal to Miami’s offensive line, with so many linemen going down that coach Butch Barry fielded 12 different starting combinations.
Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel preaches “adversity is opportunity,” but when more of your offensive line is on injured reserve than on the field, there reaches a point in which adversity denies opportunity. General manager Chris Grier has acknowledged he has signed some veterans with injury histories but says that’s often the cost of doing business in the free-agent market.
Ingold has no explanation for the string of catastrophic injuries.
“Correlation or causation, I’m not really sure,” he said.
The Grant DuBose story is doubly sad
Few NFL players can match the hard-luck story of a backup receiver named Grant DuBose, a member of last year’s team. He appeared in two games, missed the next 11 with an injury, then returned for a game in Houston. That game was stopped for 12½ minutes in a silent stadium, with players grouped around medical personnel as they cut off DuBose’s jersey, immobilized him and prepared to take him to a hospital with a head injury that finished his season.
It could also have ended his career, had the Buffalo Bills not signed him on Aug. 19.
On Aug. 20, DuBose was down again.
This time, DuBose fell in a one-on-one drill, broke his collarbone and needed surgery.
The trainer’s room in Miami Gardens has been a beehive of activity the past two seasons. The 2023 offensive line lost its anchor, center Connor Williams, and was without Robert Jones, Isaiah Wynn and Pro Bowl left tackle Terron Armstead on many Sundays. Star cornerback Jalen Ramsey’s Dolphins debut was delayed because of a knee injury costing him seven games. Although Tagovailoa played all 17 games for the only time in his career, he was without his top running back. De’Von Achane had seemed fine following a 151-yard rushing performance against the New York Giants, only to report a knee problem over the next several hours that essentially sidelined him for six weeks.
The 2024 season was no better. Tagovailoa suffered another concussion in Week 2, raising speculation he might retire. The Dolphins went 1-3 in his absence. Tagovailoa returned, saying he loved the game too much to give it up, but when the Dolphins lost his first two games back, they were 2-6 and hopes were dwindling of winning a playoff game for the first time in 25 years.
Miami Dolphins lost three for this season in training camp
But a new season is upon us, and with it, new hope. Cautious hope, you might say. Training camp saw the already-thin secondary lose two potential starters in Kader Kohou and Artie Burns. Running back Alexander Mattison was a standout until going down with a neck injury that is season-ending, although not career-ending. Even kicker Jason Sanders starts the season on injured reserve with a hip ailment and will miss the first four games.
It’s enough to push a coach to the brink, if they were wired that way.
“A player will get injured at some point in time in their journey playing football,” McDaniel said. “But to get good at football, you have to play football. I don’t spend any time worrying about it because I understand both things to be true.”
No NFL coach can afford to throw in the figurative towel – or even appear to do so – no matter how bleak the injury problem gets. Coaches must maintain a brave, defiant face because anything else would effectively end the team’s season. Players also fall in line, subscribing to the “next man up” philosophy even though the fill-in, by definition, is never rated by coaches to be as good as the player who just went down.
That’s not to say any of this is easy. Take that Houston game. Doctors were still treating DuBose at the hospital as tight end Jonnu Smith wrestled with the mental toll of serious injuries. One name that came to mind for Smith: Bills safety Damar Hamlin, whose life was saved by first responders after he went into cardiac arrest on the field in January 2023.
“We know what game we signed up for, you know what I mean?” Smith said. “I’m just pointing to the fact of the human elements to it. Grant going down how he went down, obviously you see situations like that. The Damar Hamlin situation kind of shook up – shook the whole NFL world up. So anytime you see that happen, you don’t even think about football anymore.”
Tua Tagovailoa says he’ll weigh risk/reward in 2025
The Dolphins finished 8-9 in 2024, their first losing season under McDaniel and first that didn’t end in the playoffs. The general feeling is things may have been different had Tagovailoa not missed six games. Only once in his five NFL seasons has Tagovailoa played all 17 games. He repeatedly has stressed that in the future, he must make prudent decisions while weighing risk/reward in 2025.
“Is this the right thing to do in the heat of the moment where I’ve got to make a split decision on should I go for the first down, should I not?” Tagovailoa said. “Should I do this on fourth down, should I not? And then given the circumstances, right – is it to go to the playoffs, is it to win a must-win game? You’ve got to throw all of those in there. But I think the most important thing is I’ve got to be more selfless instead of being selfish and I’m thinking this is what the guys want from me.”
Kyle Johnston is the Dolphins’ head athletic trainer, leading a staff of five other trainers. John Uribe is their head physician and orthopedic surgeon, working in conjunction with 11 doctors.
With so many injury concerns, it might be natural to look at the care players are receiving. But for the past two years, the Dolphins have placed first in the NFLPA survey measuring players’ satisfaction. The Dolphins’ ranking included a first-place finish In the categories of training staff, training room and a question of whether players felt their training staff “significantly contributes to their overall success.”
Ingold, who enters the season fresh out of concussion protocol, said the staff tailors training and recovery plans specific to each player.
“They’re going to explain a process to you, build a game plan with you, so that communication and respect is at the top,” Ingold said. “And I think that’s why they get graded so high.”
As McDaniel can attest, there’s a reason many of his news conferences are dominated by questions about injuries. Will that be the case again in 2025? Or is Ingold correct when he figures this team is due for a season of good health?
“I think some karma is adding up, for sure,” Ingold joked. “We’d bank some up, so hopefully we’re able to use it.”
Most money channeled toward players on injured reserve since 2022
- Detroit $ 52.4m
- Denver $ 50.7m
- Arizona $49.5M
- Dallas $ 47.7m
- Pittsburgh $ 46.2m
- Miami $44.5M
