Quick hits from the introductory Dolphins press conference for new general manager Jon-Eric Sullivan and new coach Jeff Hafley (please keep checking back, with updates to be added to the bottom):
▪ Dolphins owner Stephen Ross, who is making a statement but not taking questions, said this “is really what I hope starts a new beginning. I know a lot of you are frustrated over the last few years with the performance of the team. I am equally frustrated.”
Ross said when he bought the team, he had two objectives: “One was establishing winning teams that played for Super Bowls on a continual basis and two, to bring the county together and be the best-in-class football organization. We accomplished one of those things, but what everyone looks at is winning football.”
He said he wanted “to get people from winning organizations, knowing what winning is. We were very thorough in reviewing who was available, what people thought of them, what their backgrounds were. We were able to pick the coach we thought was going to be the best. We want a new generation of winning football games.”
Ross said Sullivan “clearly stood out” in the GM search. “His enthusiasm for the game and knowledge for how the game works and what it takes to build a winner” …“stood out far above” everyone else.
With Hafley, “Jeff stood out among them all,” Ross said of the 10 coaches who interviewed. “We made our decision early. I’m happy to know we got who we wanted and the rest of the teams are now looking.”
Ross — aware that Hafley’s hiring has been connected, to an extent, to Hafley’s history with Sullivan in Green Bay — said he was “thorough and objective” in the coaching hire before offering the job to Hafley.
▪Malik Washington, Kenneth Grant, Jordan Phillips, Jason Maitre and Jonah Savaiinaea were among several players spotted at the press conference. Cornerback Kader Kohou is here on a bike, as he continues working back from Aug. ACL. He’s set to be an unrestricted free agent.
Dolphins consultant Troy Aikman and team executive Dan Marino are also at the news conference.
▪ Sullivan said to Ross that he wants to ”bring you and your family the winner that you deserve.. I can sense a burning desire to win” here.
Sullivan said: “It’s a tough business. It’s not a complicated business. We will implement a proven process, something sustainable over time.”
He reiterated his plan to build the roster primarily through the draft and retention of draft picks.
“It’s not going to be an easy road, but the journey is well worth going on. When we get to the end of this thing, and hoist that trophy, we will know we started at the bottom. I have no doubt we will get there.”
▪ Sullivan says “we will use [free agency] when we get to a healthy cap situation” and add difference makers in free agency at that time. The Dolphins are not in a healthy cap situation at this time.
▪ Sullivan said even though Hafley is a ‘friend of mine,” that had nothing to do with his hiring. He said all of the coaching interviews “confirmed my conviction he’s the right guy….This hire was based on professional respect.”
Sullivan said he appreciates Hafley’s ability to teach, motivate, connect with players and inspire. “He will bring discipline and accountability” not only with players but with the others coaches. He said: “We are in line with player development.”
▪ Hafley said “there’s no replacement” for hard work “and there won’t be here.” He said he has learned “it’s OK to tell a player you love them and pour everything you can into them.”
He said he learned “what toughness is about and how to grind. I learned from Hall of Fame players you can’t be afraid to coach guys. They all want to get better.”
He said he will earn trust and “follow up with what I say we’re going to do.”
He said he’s going to talk to his team about “toughness every single day.” He said that means physical and mental toughness.
He said the process is “going to take time” but it’s important to build the right “foundation.”
Hafley said the Dolphins are a “storied organization and you deserve a winner. I’m going to do everything in my power to bring you one here.”
▪ Sullivan said Ross told him: “if you don’t get this done, you’ll never be able to say it’s because you didn’t have the resources.” Sullivan said it’s not like that with every team.
▪ Hafley said he learned how to be honest with players and tell them things they might not want to hear.
▪ Hafley said the COVID shutdown happened just after he took the Boston College head job, which he held from 2020 through 2023.
“Everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face. And I got hit pretty hard.”
He said he made mistakes as a head coach and learned from them. BC had three good seasons and one 3-9 season under his guidance.
He said he left BC to join Green Bay as defensive coordinator early in 2024 because “I want to coach football and there was a lot going on that didn’t allow me to do that anymore” in the NIL era. “Ultimately, I wanted to be a head coach again in this league.”
▪ What is the Green Bay Way exactly?
Sullivan said it’s about culture and building through the draft and “retain our own players if at all possible because of the culture piece of it. That has allowed Green Bay to succeed over a long time…. We will get back to free agency but have to get back to a spot where we can.”
▪ Sullivan said the Packers made some mistakes in the draft but also have had a lot of good picks. “We’ve hit on a lot of players in the middle to late rounds.”
▪ Sullivan said he had nothing to do with Mike McDaniel’s dismissal — “that happened before I got here” — and added that he’s a “brilliant football mind.”
▪ Sullivan suggested he wasn’t pre-disposed to hire Hafley. “This was never done from the start. I know there’s a perception out there. I have a lot of conviction about this guy, but we had to go into this with eyes open. We put together a list of the most potential competitive head coaches out there. We had great conversations after each interview. There were a lot of really strong candidates.”
▪ Sullivan said he and Danny Sillman (part of the team’s circle of trust) speak multiple times a day and that he has endless energy.
Ross has said that Sillman, who runs one of his companies and is his son-in-law, will run the team down the line.
Sullivan also praised Dolphins executive Brandon Shore for being a team player; he is expected to remain with the organization in a key role.
▪ Sullivan said quarterback is a “huge question looming over the organization. I have a lot of respect for Tua Tagovailoa; he’s accomplished a lot in this league. Whether it’s Tua or anyone else, it’s unfair to talk about anything specific before I talk to the player myself.
“To say I have a great understanding of what we’re going to do or where we’re going to go, that would be a lie. I thought Quinn Ewers did a great job at the end of the season. We will figure that out. ..But I can’t give you that answer today.”
▪ Sullivan said there was a lot of consideration given to hiring someone with previous NFL head coaching experience. That ultimately didn’t happen, but Hafley was the only assistant interviewed who had been an FBS head coach.
▪ Hafley said six teams wanted to meet with him and he wanted to make Miami his first visit. “I do believe I’m ready,” he said of being an NFL head coach. “I’m going to surround myself with great people.”
▪ Sullivan said “we will build this from the inside out. Make sure your line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball” is good enough to win.
Sullivan said “we need to make sure we build infrastructure” first before dealing with quarterback.
He said whenever the team settles on a quarterback, he wants to have strong lines and offensive weapons in place. (He quickly added that “whether it’s Tua or Quinn or someone from the outside.”)
▪ Hafley said he will call plays defensively, noting “it’s really important to me. The details will be exactly how I want them.”
▪ Hafley, who is searching for an offensive coordinator, said he likes to “run the ball and be physical up front” and to be able to run successfully even when teams know it’s coming. But he wants his coordinator to adapt to the skill set of his players.
▪ Sullivan said he learned “don’t wait until you don’t have a quarterback to find one. We are going to invest in that position every year if we can. We will draft quarterbacks every year or other year because you have to. If you hit on two, you have trade value.”
▪ Hafley was courted heavily by other teams.
He said as he sat in his South Florida hotel with his wife on Monday before his Dolphins interview, “I had teams trying to get me on the phone, owners trying to get me on the phone, a team trying to get me to leave the hotel and interview in this state, and then I went into the [Dolphins] interview. I had a plane waiting to take me somewhere else” — Tennessee, specifically, if he hadn’t been hired by the Dolphin on Monday.
The Dolphins asked Hafley to leave the room after his in-person interview Monday. They summoned him 45 minutes later to offer him the job.
Hafley said during that period he went from optimism about getting job to thinking he might be boarding a flight to Tennessee to interview there.
After getting the job, he spent Monday evening watching the UM-Indiana national championship game from a Hard Rock Stadium suite.
This story was originally published January 22, 2026 at 11:11 AM.
Barry Jackson
Miami Herald
Barry Jackson has written for the Miami Herald since 1986 and has written the Florida Sports Buzz column since 2002.
