Dolfan Radio | Week 1 Recap

Week 1 in Vegas: The Windows Were There

By Brad Michaels • September 13, 2026

I picked this 20–17 the other way on Friday. Sunday finished 27–13 the other way, and I am not going to sit here and pretend we were a bounce from covering. What I will say, because the tape says it, is that this game kept offering us a door. We walked through one of them. The rest stayed open.

We already wrote the year. Four-and-thirteen weather. Grade the rooms, not the board. That sentence still holds after one Sunday in Allegiant. Kirk Cousins threw three touchdowns in his Raiders debut. Ashton Jeanty looked like the back they drafted. None of that is a surprise if you have been watching this rebuild with both eyes open. The useful part of the afternoon is the math underneath the score. Miami was not outgained in any dramatic way. Miami was out-converted. That is a different problem, and it is a problem a young team can work on.

The game, in the numbers that actually moved it

Las Vegas opened with a 16-play, 93-yard drive that took 8:58 off the clock and ended with Cousins finding Jack Bech from 15. That is not an explosion. That is a veteran offense asking a first-year defense to tackle for nine minutes. Matt Gay made it 10–0 from 47. Riley Patterson answered from 41, then from 37 at the half. If you only looked at the kicking column, we were hanging around. Jeanty slipped out of the backfield for a 13-yard score late in the second and it was 17–6 at the break.

Then the first clean window opened. Cousins threw it to Michael Taaffe on the second snap of the third quarter. Four plays, 52 yards, 1:45. Malik Willis ran left, Will Kacmarek cleared the edge, and Willis walked in from 14. 17–13. That is the number we spent Friday talking ourselves into, and for about three minutes it was sitting there on the board.

Vegas started the next drive at midfield after the kick return. Five plays, 50 yards. Jeanty again, another 13-yard throw. 24–13 before the building had time to decide whether the first half had been a fluke. Gay added a 30-yarder after a 13-play, 7:07 grind and it was 27–13. The fourth quarter was zeros on both sides. The scoreboard froze. The efficiency numbers did not get any kinder.

Read that table twice. Miami actually won yards per play, 5.2 to 4.3. Willis’s 8.1 yards per attempt is a perfectly livable number. The Raiders won the game on downs, clock, and finishing. Twenty-one first downs to thirteen. Thirty-seven rushes to eighteen. Three-of-four in the red zone against one-of-three. That is how a 4.3-yards-per-play offense scores 27. They stayed on the field. We got off it.

The good, with the grain of salt still in the glass

Caleb Douglas can play. Five catches on seven targets for 94 yards, 18.8 per catch, the most anyone had in the building. He had four for 81 by halftime. That is not a camp story that failed to travel. Willis kept finding him, and Douglas kept getting open from the slot and outside. Chris Bell added a 25-yarder on two targets. Malik Washington was 3-of-8 for 53 with a long of 30 and the fumble that ended it. The room is still a project. One afternoon is not a finished tree. It is a reason to keep watching the kids instead of staring at the empty chairs.

Jacob Rodriguez won the job in August and then ran to the football. Fourteen tackles, 5 solo and 9 assisted. That is the second-most a Dolphins rookie has posted in a debut, behind Zach Thomas in 1996. Jordyn Brooks had 9. Chris Johnson, in his first regular-season snaps in this scheme, had 11. Rodriguez is going to miss a few. He missed one when Jeanty scored the second time. He also played like a starter on a night when a lot of first-year pieces looked like first-year pieces. That is allowed to count.

The secondary took the ball away. Taaffe to start the second half. Dante Trader Jr. in the fourth after Cousins double-clutched. We spent two weeks worrying about Brock Bowers and a young safety group. Bowers sat. Michael Mayer caught 6 of 7 for 32 and did not wreck anybody. Two picks against a 15-year starter is not nothing. It is also not fourteen points. We cashed one of them. That is the half of the sentence that still stings a little, and also the half a rebuild lives with.

Willis finished 15-of-27 for 220, no passing touchdowns, one interception, a 66.9 rating, and 39 yards on six carries. The rating looks worse than the tape. Eight yards an attempt means the shots he did get off traveled. The sack column is the thing sitting next to him. Local reporting out of the game had him mostly responsible for two of the five. The other three belong to a line that let 17 pressures in. I am not crowning him. I am not burying him. He is a seventh-career-start quarterback on a three-year deal in Year 1 of a tear-down, and he made the throw to Douglas and the run that made it a one-score game. Sunday was the first tape that counts. It was not empty.

The bad is efficiency, not effort

Third down is the whole game in one row. Miami’s first three third-down looks were a third-and-5 and two third-and-15s. You cannot live there. Two of ten for the afternoon. Vegas went 5-of-13, which is not pretty either, except they kept the chains moving on first and second down often enough that third down was a suggestion instead of a crisis. Eighteen Miami rushes against 37 for Las Vegas is the other half of that. Slowik wants a run game that is not a suggestion. Achane got 11 carries at 3.3, which is what happens when a defense can put an extra hat in the box because the passing game has not forced two-high. Last year he led the league at 5.7 a pop. One week is not a verdict on him. It is a verdict on whether the script could make Vegas respect the other stuff. For long stretches, it could not.

The protection is the other number I am taking into next Sunday. Five sacks, 35 yards lost, 17 pressures. Crosby had 1.5. Kwity Paye had 2. Nakobe Dean had 1. Folorunso Fatukasi split one. Patrick Paul had a long day on the left side. Aaron Brewer and Paul stacked holdings that turned a drive into second-and-a-mile. Austin Jackson’s hands-to-the-face wiped out a late conversion to Achane. This is a line with two first-rounders, two second-rounders, and a Pro Bowl center. Week 1 against Crosby is a hard draw. Week 2 against San Francisco is not a softer one. The preview said if Willis was throwing from a pocket that was shrinking in real time, the afternoon would get small. It got small. That does not make the people in those five seats finished. It makes them the season, same as we wrote in September.

The other line never got home. Zero sacks. Cousins sat in a clean pocket for most of 30 dropbacks and completed 70 percent at 5.3 yards an attempt. That last number is the tell. He did not beat us over the top. He beat us underneath, on time, because nobody moved him. Chop Robinson finished with one assisted tackle and no quarterback hit. Josh Uche started across from him. Malik Herring and Robert Beal Jr. rotated. Brooks and Jordan Phillips were the only ones who actually put a hand on Cousins. Hafley did not blitz much. That might change. Year 3 for Chop is still the bet. One quiet September afternoon against a quick-game script is not the bet coming off the board. It is a note. The next four quarterbacks on the sheet will turn that note into a problem if it stays this quiet.

The windows, counted instead of waved at

I keep saying windows because that is what the afternoon was. Not a collapse. A series of possessions where the math briefly tilted and then tilted back.

Turnovers finished 2–2. Expected points from those six rows did not. Vegas’s red-zone file was 3-of-4. Ours was 1-of-3, and one of those three was the miss after Wright’s return. Eight Miami flags for 61 yards, including a taunting on JuJu Brents that kept a Vegas drive alive and the holding pair that buried a series. Special teams donated a long return right after we had crawled back to four points, then donated the miss when Wright handed us the red zone. A team this thin cannot give away field position in both directions and also go 2-of-10 on third down. That is not a moral. That is arithmetic.

What we said we were watching

Friday’s card asked five questions, and I would rather grade those than invent a new personality for this roster overnight.

Did Achane stay on the field and get enough touches. He stayed. Fifteen touches, 66 yards from scrimmage. That is volume without juice, and the juice is what this offense needs from him until the passing tree grows. Did Willis take care of the ball. One pick on 27 attempts is livable. Five sacks is the problem that sits next to him, and two of those were on him. Did Chop wreck a series. He did not. Did the line hold on third-and-2. The first three third downs never even got to third-and-2. Did the secondary live through Mayer. It did more than that. It took the ball from Cousins twice.

Call it two and a half out of five if you are grading the rooms instead of the scoreboard. That is an honest night in September of a tear-down. It is also why I am not going to dress the 20–17 pick up as a near-miss. Jeanty was himself — 23 carries for 102, six catches for 45, two scores, 147 from scrimmage. The edge never arrived. The clock belonged to Vegas by 9:46. Those three things will beat you most weeks. They beat us on the first one, and they beat us without anyone on that sideline mailing it in.

1993 stays in the featured slot. That was the deal until Miami wins a game, and Miami did not win a game. Next week is San Francisco, at Levi’s, 4:25 Eastern. Purdy and that roster will tell on the same rooms this one did: the pocket, the third-down calls, whether Chop can wreck a protection that is not throwing it in 2.4 seconds, whether Achane gets a box he can live in. Watch the first two drives before you watch the box score. We said that before Vegas. The first two drives on Sunday were a three-and-out and then watching Cousins eat nine minutes. The sentence still works.

Sunday, Sept. 13. Allegiant. Final 27–13. Miami 50 plays, 259 yards, 5.2 per. Vegas 67 plays, 290 yards, 4.3 per. Willis 15-of-27, 220, 8.1 YPA, 1 INT, 6-39-1 rushing. Douglas 5-7-94. Achane 11-36 plus 4-30. Rodriguez 14 tackles. Jeanty 23-102, 6-45, 2 TD. Cousins 21-of-30, 160, 3 TD, 2 INT, 0 sacks.

What did you see in the third-down tape? Leave it in the comments. I will be there.