The Miami Dolphins will need to land some reinforcements in free agency this offseason and then supplement it by hitting on their picks during the 2025 NFL draft.
But there are other paths to overall team improvement, and one of the most significant annually involves getting contributions from players who didn’t do much the previous seasons.
We’re talking about breakout players, specifically.
And the Dolphins have a few candidates for that role, generally draft picks who have yet to contribute for one reason or another.
A few days ago, Pro Football Focus posted an article naming each breakout player for each of the 32 teams, settling on linebacker Mohamed Kamara for the Dolphins.
He certainly would fit the bill as a breakout candidate because his rookie season after arriving as a fifth-round pick was utterly forgettable.
After flashing intriguing skills during training camp, Kamara appeared in only five games and recorded one tackle and one quarterback hit while playing 26 snaps on defense and 30 more on special teams.
This is what PFF wrote about Kamara: “Calais Campbell and Emmanuel Ogbah are free agents this offseason, and Bradley Chubb and Jaelan Phillips combined for only 134 total snaps. One answer to this question could be Chop Robinson, but he already somewhat broke out. Meanwhile, Kamara, a former Colorado State star, played only 26 snaps but still registered two pressures as a pro. With the Rams, Kamara ranked fifth in pass-rush win rate among qualified defensive linemen in 2023, and the Dolphins could easily give him a look in 2025.”
Yes, Kamara could get a look in 2025, but how long of a look will he get if the Dolphins bring back Chubb — his contract status makes him less than a 100 percent certainty — for a rotational trio with Phillips and Robinson.
And it’s also not like the Dolphins couldn’t have used Kamara this season because there were opportunities when injuries hit and the team went outside the organization to sign veteran Tyus Bowser instead of giving Kamara an opportunity.
So, yeah, there’s a chance that Kamara could blossom in his second season and that definitely would be ideal, but we also we couldn’t call him the team’s most likely breakout candidate.
From this vantage point, that distinction has to go to running back Jaylen Wright.
The biggest reason is that he flashed good ability at times as a rookie fourth-round pick in 2024, most notably when he had 86 yards on only 13 carries in the Week 5 victory against the New England Patriots.
Wright performed well enough up to the halfway mark of the season that the media began asking head coach Mike McDaniel about him getting more opportunities on offense. But Wright’s production dipped dramatically — it crashed, actually — after the Buffalo game in Week 9 and he never became a bigger factor down the stretch.
But it says here he should got more opportunities in 2025 because Raheem Mostert looks like a strong cap casualty candidate and Jeff Wilson Jr. is a pending UFA who we can’t imagine would want to return after becoming a non-factor in 2024.
That means that De’Von Achane and Wright should be the top two options.
Wright’s numbers in the final nine games of the 2024 season were brutal — 26 carries, 41 yards, barely over 1.5 yards per carry — but this is where we point out the entire running game crashed after that Buffalo game, which is when right tackle Austin Jackson went on IR with a knee injury and left tackle Terron Armstead stopped practicing because of a knee injury of his own.
So we’re thinking that Wright gets it right (sorry, couldn’t help it) next season and becomes a solid contributor on offense.
Cornerback Cam Smith is another young player primed for a breakout after two forgettable seasons, but we’re not nearly as convinced that will happen as we are with Wright.
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