0-17 watch for Dolphins: The case for and largely against a winless season in Miami

We all expected an exceptionally rough 2026 season for the Miami Dolphins. Their new regime includes a new head coach, new starting QB and new general manager. Pain was prevalent in the forecast, making this team a surefire target for smart survivor pool participants.

The Dolphins haven’t proven those predictions wrong as they enter Week 4 with an 0-3 record and won’t have their best offensive player, running back De’Von Achane, for the rest of the season. Preseason consensus set the Dolphins’ win total at three or four. But was that number too high?

Yahoo Sports writers Frank Schwab, Eric Edholm, Jori Epstein and Jay Busbee each looked at how worried the Dolphins should be about flirting with the infamy of a winless season. Here are their answers to this question:

Frank Schwab: No matter how bad it looks now, it’s still unlikely the Dolphins go 0-17. Give a professional team 14 more shots, even as a significant underdog, and it is likely to get a win.

But Miami looks as bad as it was feared before the season started. It had a roster that barely resembled an NFL team. The Dolphins are paying more in dead salary cap hits to players not on the roster than to players currently playing for them, which is a first in NFL history — and the roster got significantly worse without running back De’Von Achane going forward. Achane was the most talented player on the roster and now he’s done for the season with a torn ACL.

The formula for a Dolphins win would be for QB Malik Willis to go off one week against a bad defense, but the best skill-position player around Willis is … Malik Washington? Or maybe Chris Bell, a third-round rookie less than a year removed from a torn ACL?

Make no mistake: This is the worst team in the NFL. But 0-17 is a difficult thing to pull off, so I’ll say it’s likely they avoid that history. But it might be close.

Eric Edholm: No team has gone 0-17 before, and there have only been two 0-16 seasons ever — the 2008 Lions and 2017 Browns. Somewhere along the way, somehow, the Dolphins will find a way to win a game.

No De’Von Achane is a cruel twist of fate, and this roster is extremely young. But we see fluky results every season — and nearly every week — in the NFL. The Raiders won in New England last season. The Panthers beat the Packers as 13.5-point dogs in Green Bay. The Vikings shocked the Lions that same weekend.

This was always going to be a long season in Miami, and the Dolphins haven’t yet led a game in a meaningful way, but I think the coaching staff might be pretty good. It’s going to take some time and some lumps, but I think there’s an upset along the way.

They still have two games each against the Patriots and Jets, both 1-2, plus the winless Chargers still on the schedule. There are seven more home games. This is by no means a good Dolphins team, but I think it’s far from the worst we’ve ever seen. So yes, 0-17 is on the table in the same way that “this plane could also land in the ocean” is on the table. The Achane injury made it more likely than it was before, but I still think we’re taking about a one- or two-win team, not a historically inept one.

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Miami Dolphins running back De’Von Achane (28) suffered a torn ACL on Sunday against the Chiefs. He will miss the remainder of the season. (AP Photo/David Santiago)

Jori Epstein: Only four out of 1,669 possible teams since the 1970 NFL merger have finished a regular season winless, per Pro Football Reference. So no, I’m not expecting the Dolphins to reflect .2% of history rather than the 99.8%. Even if we limit that sample size to teams who started the season 0-3, the odds of a winless season increase but still are highly unlikely: 98.6% of teams that started 0-3 went on to win a game.

Only four of 252 0-3 teams since the merger have finished winless: the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 1982 Baltimore Colts, 2008 Detroit Lions and 2017 Cleveland Browns. Each time the NFL expands its regular-season slate, teams’ chances to nab a win tick up.

For the tanking crowd: I don’t recommend winless seasons. Developing rosters requires developing a winning culture. None of the four winless teams advanced to the playoffs in the two seasons that followed. The Colts took a full five more years to return to the playoffs. Landing a generational talent only to string together more losing seasons could wear down that generational talent before a turnaround takes place. So here’s to the Dolphins eking out at least a win or two. And don’t be surprised if they upset a playoff-bound team that underestimates them, like the Buffalo Bills or Denver Broncos. On any given Sunday …

Jay Busbee: There’s a famous line in poker that if you can’t spot the mark in your first 30 minutes at the table, you’re the mark. If you’re Miami and you can’t spot the guaranteed W looking at your schedule, well … you’re everybody else’s guaranteed W.

Miami might not be favored in a game until the 2030s, but it’s highly unlikely they’ll go defeated the entire season. The talent margin between, say, the Bills and Dolphins is a lot narrower than even the teams in the Big Ten. Miami will catch fire for a game, catch someone napping, face a backup quarterback … somewhere along the way, everything will break the Dolphins’ way and get them a victory. Probably against the Bills because the NFL gods have a sense of humor that way.

That said, when getting a single freaking win is your stretch goal for the season, everything’s off kilter. This ought to be a tear-it-down-to-the-studs offseason, and hopefully rebuilding with a good 2027 draft. Until then, Miami fans, practice a mindset of calm acceptance … and enjoy warm weather all the way through the New Year, I guess.