Two Dolphins position groups set franchise-best marks in 2020
The Miami Dolphins’ 2020 campaign featured plenty of high marks. The Dolphins scored doubled digit wins for just the third time in 15 years. Miami enjoyed their biggest point differential spread since 2002. Miami finished the season 9-3 over their final 12 football games and did so despite a slew of rookies starting on the offensive side of the football and pushed their streak of consecutive games with a turnover forced to 22.
In all, year two of the Brian Flores era should leave Miami fans with plenty to be optimistic of. But two of Miami’s position groups, one on each side of the football, enjoyed fruitful seasons to the degree which Miami has never seen before — a testament to what Miami is building and also a testament to the Dolphins coaching staff proving capable of weaponizing their talent.
Offensively, Miami’s tight end room new high-water marks for productivity among the position over the course of a season. In all, Miami logged 91 receptions for 1,061 yards and 11 scores between their tight end trio of Mike Gesicki, Durham Smythe and Adam Shaheen — this coming in spite of the narrative coming into the season that former offensive coordinator Chan Gailey didn’t use tight ends in his offense. He did in 2020; although that was in part necessity due to the status of the rest of the skill players Miami was working with this season.
Defensively, the Dolphins saw their best pass rushing season from their linebackers in team history. Before 2020, no Miami Dolphins team had seen three separate linebackers log 5+ sacks on a season. But sure enough, Miami had three come through in complementary roles this year:
LB Jerome Baker: 7.0 sacks
LB Kyle Van Noy: 6.0 sacks
LB Andrew Van Ginkel: 5.5 sacks
The intrigue here will lie with how the Dolphins choose to attack these positions, if at all, in the offseason. Will Miami look to continue to improve talent here? Or is the work considered “done” for the time being. Regardless of the movement from here, Miami deserves plenty of credit for finding ways to unlock new, previously unseen levels of production from two position groups that had never enjoyed such success in team history.
