Dolphins hire former Packers DC Jeff Hafley as head coach
Yahoo Sports host Andrew Siciliano and senior NFL writers Frank Schwab and Charles Robinson react to the Miami Dolphins hiring Jeff Hafley as head coach. Check out the full conversation on “Inside Coverage” - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , YouTube or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
See, Rob, that Jeff Hafley is going to follow John Michael Sullivan.
Or John Eric Sullivan, I beg your pardon, uh, to Miami.
He's the new GM there, former Packers assistant GM.
You bring with him the former Packers' DC.
Your thoughts?
Yeah, I mean, look, it's...
I think it's a great defensive hire.
There's no question.
I mean, you know, one of the, I think elite play callers from the defensive side, And when he had Micah Parsons and his full complement in Green Bay, I mean, I think that was a championship- level defense, particularly when they peak before Parsons suffered the knee injury.
I- the way I viewed this, Though, and when we did the coaching roundtable, I felt we were gonna see Better jobs come off the, you know, off the table.
And ultimately, Hafley was gonna end up in Miami.
Because I'll just be straight up with you, I don't know that a lot of candidates really viewed Miami as an elite-level job.
I think they, They had questions about, "Look, what do you gotta do with Tua?"
You walk in, you're automatically under the burden of this decision that's gotta be made.
And even if Tua, you know, you bite the bullet and And move Tua off the roster, what are you doing at the quarterback spot?
It's just a massive rebuild, and the cap hit that would come with moving Tua.
Um, the potential danger of, you know, keeping Tua an extra year just to see what You've got the injury potential that could happen with Tua in 2026.
There were a lot of red flags, I think, when it ultimately came to this job.
And personally, I think that if Ross had had his druthers, I truly believe Stephen Ross, the owner, would've ended up with John Harbaugh.
As his head coach.
But I think Harbaugh looked at that and thought, "I...
I'm walking into a mess there."
I don't want to spend the next three years just cleaning up the mess before actually compete as a football team."
So, the synergy between John Eric Sullivan a head coach that he knows, and a structure that will make sense because it's two Individuals that trust each other from being in a previous, Stop with the Packers.
The hire makes sense to me.
But if it had gone beyond Hafley, I would've been interested in the candidate.
They landed.
