Assessing the Dolphins' Award Chances

Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores, GM Chris Grier and cornerback Xavien Howard all merit consideration for 2020 NFL awards

The Miami Dolphins' remarkable rise in 2020 attracted a lot of attention around the NFL, but there's reason to wonder whether that will translate to any of the major end-of-year awards.

Head coach Brian Flores, GM Chris Grier and cornerback Xavien Howard all should rank among the contenders for Coach of the Year, Executive of the Year and NFL Defensive Player of the Year, though they might end up coming up short in the voting.

We'll start with Flores and take you back to a story you did last weekend explaining that Week 17 — rightly or wrongly — could go a long way toward deciding the COY race.

It was bad enough for Flores' chances that the Dolphins came up woefully short with their 30-point loss at Buffalo, but then Kevin Stefanski helped get the Cleveland Browns in the playoffs for the first time since 2002 with a closer-than-it-should-have-been two-point victory against a Pittsburgh resting four front-line starters.

It says here that Flores should get the nod, playoffs or not, because of the work he did in helping the Dolphins jump from 5-11 to 10-6 in one year.

But Stefanski is going to be hard to ignore given Cleveland's long playoff drought and the fact he took a team with basically the same nucleus and helped it improve from 6-10 to 11-5.

Sean McDermott also has been mentioned as a leading candidate, though his 13-3 record is going to be overshadowed by the fact his team also made the playoffs last year and that GM Brandon Beane is going to get a lot of Executive of the Year votes for his trade acquisition of wide receiver Stefon Diggs, who ended up leading the NFL in receiving.

Colts GM Chris Ballard also should be a leading contender for the Executive award after his offseason trade for star defensive tackle DeForest Buckner, signing veteran QB Philip Rivers and the draft selection in the second round of running back Jonathan Taylor, who closed out his impressive rookie season by rushing for 253 yards to help Indy outlast Jacksonville to land the final AFC playoff spot and knock out the Dolphins.

But Grier deserves a lot of credit for reshaping the Dolphins roster with a flurry of free agent and draft acquisitions.

What might hurt Grier's chances is the fact he was building a talent-deprived roster with a lot of resources and therefore was bound to be able to hit on some quality newcomers.

While that may be true, it's also true that Grier hit on a lot more of the moves than he missed, and he most definitely deserves consideration.

Not that he's spending a lot of time thinking about it.

“To me, at the end of the day, it’s about building the thing right and winning games," Grier said Tuesday. "Brian will hate me saying it, but I don’t think there’s any question that Brian is the Coach of the Year. Brian does not like any of that stuff. He hates when I say it. But for what he did with this roster and team, to go through this with the pandemic, the young players, how young we were with no offseason and a completely new roster, to win 10 games with what we have and a rookie quarterback, eight rookie players on offense playing, Brian and his staff did an unbelievable job.

"I don’t really listen to any outside stuff, but I think the important thing is what Brian did what this team and I think that’s what people should really be talking about.”

When it comes to NFL Defensive Player of the Year, Howard deserves consideration for becoming the first DB in 13 years to get 10 interceptions in a season and his performance up until the last few weeks of the regular season compared favorably to that Stephon Gilmore put together when he won the award last year.

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But the problem is that while the Dolphins did end up leading the NFL in third-down defense and were first in scoring defense until the final week, they were 20th in total yards, whereas the 2019 New England defense was being compared to some of the all-time best for the first three-quarters of the season.

The other problem for Howard is the performance of both Rams defensive tackle Aaron Donald and Steelers linebacker T.J. Watt, who both excelled for the first- and third-ranked defenses in the league.

Watt led the NFL in sacks, tackles for loss and quarterback hits; Donald was second in sacks despite constantly being double-teamed.

When the eight members of the Sports Illustrated MMQB staff voted for the winners of the various NFL awards, Howard was the sixth choice for the Defensive Player of the Year award (based on a point system) behind Donald, Watt, Buckner, Browns defensive end Myles Garrett and Bears linebacker Khalil Mack.

Given what he accomplished, the view from here is that Howard has no business being any worse than third in the voting.

While the MMQB staff didn't vote on Executive of the Year, the eight writers chose their Coach of the Year, and Flores came in fourth in the voting behind Stefanski, McDermott and Matt LaFleur of the Green Bay Packers.

So when the NFL awards are presented after being voted on by NFL writers, don't be surprised if the Dolphins get shut out despite their remarkable 2020 season.

As a consolation prize, we certainly should expect to see Howard on the All-Pro first team, and it also would be a surprise if kicker Jason Sanders also didn't earn All-Pro honors, maybe even first team for him as well.

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