MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — In terms of career NFL starts, the Miami Dolphins’ Malik Willis will likely be the least experienced Week 1 starting quarterback in the league.
Willis is 27, with four years of NFL experience under his belt. But starts? He has only six, fewer than all of last year’s notable rookies — fewer than the Tennessee Titans’ Cam Ward, fewer than the New York Giants’ Jaxson Dart and fewer than the New York Saints’ Tyler Shough. He’s thrown all of 155 career passes, which is fewer than both Cleveland Browns rookie quarterbacks last year in Shedeur Sanders (212) and Dillon Gabriel (185).
And yet Willis is the quarterback the Dolphins will build around this season, having signed him to a three-year, $67 million contract that includes $45 million guaranteed. It’s a low number by today’s gaudy quarterback contract standards, but it represents a significant investment as Miami begins a franchise rebuild with a new general manager and new head coach.
That coach, Jeff Hafley, spent the last two years with Willis in Green Bay, seeing him in practice every day and seeing the potential of a former third-round draft pick who learned on the sidelines, under Mike Vrabel in Tennessee before going to the Packers.
“He’s become very confident, more consistent,” Hafley said before a joint practice with the Giants last week. “He’s taking care of the football. He’s getting rid of the ball on time. He’s playing in the pocket, but now, what he’s starting to do is, as it gets closer, he’s starting to use his legs not just to run the ball, but to step up, escape, make some throws down the field, or take off or extend plays.”
Malik Willis followed former Packers defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley from Green Bay down to Miami. (Photo by Doug Murray/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Hafley wanted to test his quarterback in practice one day last week, surprising him with pressure in a walkthrough, just to see how he’d handle it without warning.
“I thought we had him,” Hafley said. “I was like, ‘All right, we got him.’ They’re not going to block him. And it was really cool. For the first time, I saw him; he kind of baited it, because it was to his blindside. He kind of baited him, saw him and then spun out and ran and threw a touchdown. And I was angry, because I’m the one who made the call. But I was really happy because I looked at him and kind of smirked. I was like, ‘I’ve got no answer for that.’ So he’s starting to play the game a little bit, more rather than just practice.”
Being a starting quarterback carries an expectation of leadership, and that is new for Willis, long accustomed to being a backup and needing an injury or illness to get on the field. How do you command authority from a locker room full of new teammates who have yet to take the field with you in a real game? You go to work every day and show them how you prepare yourself.
“He has been amazing,” veteran Dolphins defensive lineman Zach Sieler said. “Just coming in here, hitting full stride, the energy, the great attitude he brings to the facility, the respect towards everyone in the building. The players cling to that and roll with that. Everyone’s just firing on all cylinders. Seeing us grow as a team, seeing him grow as a quarterback to get more and more comfortable each day, it’s been incredible.”
It could be a long year ahead for Willis and certainly for the Dolphins. The oddsmakers have their season win total at 4.5 wins — only the Arizona Cardinals have lower expectations — and Miami went 7-10 last year, so some kind of regression is a foregone conclusion. With that in mind, Willis’ challenge in his first full year as an NFL starter is to show enough to convince the Dolphins that they don’t need to use a high first-round pick on a quarterback from a deep and talented group of 2027 prospects.
If Willis can sell Hafley and general manager Jon-Eric Sullivan that the quarterback of their present should be the quarterback of their future, then that same high draft pick could be used on a player to help him, like Ohio State wide receiver Jeremiah Smith, who was born in Miami Gardens and went to high school down the road in Hollywood.
If Malik Willis has a strong season, maybe the Dolphins will reward him by drafting Ohio State wide receiver Jeremiah Smith. (Photo by CFP/Getty Images)
In his first few months in Miami, Willis has shown good instincts as a quarterback. He led voluntary workouts with receivers during downtime to build chemistry with them, and he’s using a helmet-mounted GoPro camera in practice to show where he’s looking and how he’s progressing through his reads during a play, reviewing reps from his own perspective in addition to normal cutups.
A starting quarterback gets the largest share of practice reps, so he’s savoring the chance to develop and grow faster than at any point in his career. A joint practice with the New York Giants last week, facing one of the league’s most athletic front sevens, was a chance for the Dolphins to test themselves against outside competition, even if it was humbling at times.
“Playing football is still fun. It’s still awesome to go out there and compete and see different looks and get to play against guys you haven’t been going against every day,” Willis said. “We got lucky enough to get a few different style defenses. Obviously, there’s different style defenses throughout the league and we hit more than our share of different types and we can see how we want to try to attack that when we get into the season. I think that was awesome.”
Miami has as anonymous a receiving corps as you’ll find in the NFL, with Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle gone and replaced by the likes of Malik Washington and Jalen Tolbert. The group became even more anonymous when the Dolphins traded Tutu Atwell to the Los Angeles Rams on Thursday. Part of Willis’ job is improving the people around him, and first-year offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik has been most pleased by how well he’s taken to that aspect of quarterbacking.
Wide receiver Jalen Tolbert joined the Dolphins after a four-year stint with the Cowboys. (Photo by Doug Murray/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
“He’s been great on the field, and he’s just consistently gotten better in everything that we’re doing,” Slowik said. “And really there’s a lot that goes along with the quarterback position. You’ve got to handle yourself, you’ve got to handle the huddle, you’ve got to handle the guys around you, you’ve got to make sure that you’re on your stuff, to make sure they’re on their stuff. You’ve got to help guys out post-huddle. There’s just a lot of things that naturally come with the position that he handles with ease really. So that’s been pretty awesome to see. And just to see his continued improvement every day within what we’re doing has been fun.”
There were glimpses of promise with Willis last year. He came off the bench to replace an injured Jordan Love and held his own against the Bears, going 9 of 11 for 121 yards and a touchdown and taking the game to overtime before Chicago prevailed. His lone start a week later was a loss to the Ravens, but he went 18 of 21 for 288 yards and one touchdown, rushing for another 60 yards and two more scores. It’s a small sample, but he’s completed 79% of his passes in the last two years. Nobody else with at least 50 passes is higher than 72%.
Willis will have a chance to prove himself on a much larger scale this season, trying to find success leading a team expected to have very little of that. Hafley sees steady growth in his quarterback, with the hopes that will continue throughout the season.
“Can he take another step?” Hafley said of his expectations in preseason. “Can he take another step with the playbook? Can he take another step with the execution? Can he take another step as the leader of the offense? And then can he start to become a leader of the entire team? … I think he’s a guy that has gotten better every single day, and he’s just been unfazed. He’s the same person. You can’t rattle him, I’m pleased with where he’s at. I think it will be a work in progress for the rest of camp, but I’m excited where he’s at.”