Nobody needed to tell the Dolphins’ players where they stood on Halloween morning.
They’d just been blown out after hanging around in the first half against the Ravens in a home Thursday night game. Their general manager of the last decade, Chris Grier, had been let go. They were 2–7, so the idea of making the playoffs was laughable. All of which put everyone in the building, from head coach to quarterback, on notice. And with the trade deadline looming, the team wouldn’t wait to make changes.
So the leaders of the locker room gathered their peers and delivered a tough-love ultimatum to spark some level of change. The deadline was Tuesday, with a home date against the five-time reigning AFC East champions, the Bills, five days later.
“We really emphasized, whoever ends up staying on this team, or coming to this team come Wednesday, we’re all gonna have each other’s backs, we’re all gonna lean into one another,” veteran safety Minkah Fitzpatrick told me Sunday. “Actually one of the points that we as leaders of the team came together and wanted to communicate was that we still have a lot of football left, we have a lot of talent on this team, we trust our coaches.
“And we just had to continue to lean into each other. And I feel like we’ve done a really good job of that. We just got closer and started executing at a higher level.”
Miami hasn’t lost since. The Dolphins routed the Bills 30–13. They outlasted the Commanders in Madrid, 16–13. And on Sunday, coming off their bye, they came out of the gate like a thoroughbred and hung on to hold off a furious rally from a spunky Saints team.
At the middle of all this is the coach who survived Grier’s dismissal.
Through September and October, Mike McDaniel was seen by many as a dead man walking in Miami. However, while rumblings suggested that the locker room had gone sideways, those in the upper reaches of the Dolphins’ organization held that McDaniel had not lost the players. In fact, this was a primary reason why they decided not to let him go and give wildly popular defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver a run, when Grier was fired.
The bet the team made on Halloween has very clearly paid off in the month since. The Dolphins aren’t just winning; their victories have been emphatic in a way true to McDaniel’s coaching roots. Miami has averaged 177 rushing yards per game during its three-game winning streak, with Sunday’s 164 yards the low benchmark for that short stretch.
The defense, meanwhile, has been increasingly opportunistic. The unit created three turnovers against Buffalo. Against Washington, a Jack Jones pick in overtime essentially won the game, putting Miami in range for the game-winning field goal one snap into the extra session.
On Sunday, Miami’s defense showed up again. The Dolphins dominated the first half and carried a 16–0 lead heading into the break. Then, the Saints stormed back and, down 19–17 after a 15-yard touchdown throw from Tyler Shough to Devaughn Vele, were a two-point conversion away from tying the game with 1:17 left.
Fitzpatrick wasn’t going to let that happen. Shough tried to go underneath Vele again, and the veteran safety undercut his route.
“We were in man, but we had doubles on [Chris] Olave, and then No. 2 to the field,” he said. “And I was one-on-one at the three spot and he ran a shallow [cross], I was hip-to-hip on it, slipped in last second and then the quarterback threw the ball. So I just made a play on it.”
He did more than just that, catching the ball and running it all the way back for two points to extend Miami’s lead to 21–17. It seemed like window dressing at the time, but wound up being consequential. The Saints went on to recover an onside kick and the Dolphins got a fourth-and-1 stop to finish off the game. With the ball at their 36-yard line, the Saints might’ve kicked a game-winning field goal if the scoreline was 19–17, not 21–17.
“Whenever you make a play on a two-point conversion, you’re taught to always try and score because you never know what those two points are going to be worth towards the end of the game,” Fitzpatrick said. “Thankfully, we got those two points and they came in crucial.”
Minkah Fitzpatrick took it to the 🏠 for 2️⃣
— Miami Dolphins (@MiamiDolphins) November 30, 2025
RT to #ProBowlVote pic.twitter.com/IAcv2PwWCD
Miami’s made a lot of crucial plays of late—an indication that the coaches have the players locked in.
How did McDaniel keep his players on board?
Interesting enough, according to Fitzpatrick, it was by letting go of control.
“He’s done a really good job of listening to everybody that’s around him,” said Fitzpatrick, who was traded back to Miami (where he was drafted in 2018) from Pittsburgh over the summer. “He’s a guy that doesn’t really care where good ideas come from. He’s listened to players, to coaches, and he’s made tweaks and adjustments, as we’ve gone about the season, in our work week and our preparation. He’s just been really adaptable to what we’ve asked of him.
“I think he’s done a really good job of that. And also just not paying attention to all of the nonsense outside of the building.”
Of course, that “nonsense” became pretty unavoidable over the past couple of months.
But through the turmoil, McDaniel tried to be honest with his players, and challenged them to make the team their own. Leaders like Fitzpatrick, clearly, responded by taking the wheel.
“He’s enabled us to take charge,” said Fitzpatrick. “He called out specific guys in the leadership meeting and he demanded more from us. He wanted us to communicate to the team the lessons that he wants communicated, and also what we wanted to communicate. Kind of like I said before, he’s been so adaptable in listening to us as players, and to his coaches. He’s allowed us to take ownership.”
The Dolphins are now 5–7 and they play the Jets next week. If they win that one, they’ll go into Pittsburgh for Fitzpatrick’s homecoming, with a chance to get to .500 on Monday Night Football. And if they get to 7–7 …
“We’ve really been taking it week to week, just trying to get some momentum, just trying to win one at a time, not trying to think too far ahead,” said Fitzpatrick. “Because if we’re just taking these one at a time, and winning one at a time, then at the end of the season, we’ll be right where we want to be.”
Whether that means advancing to the playoffs remains to be seen.
What’s clear, though, is they’re already in a much different place than anyone thought they’d be a month ago.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as The Halloween Meeting That Changed the Dolphins’ Season.
