Dolphins’ Jaelan Phillips announces successful surgery for torn ACL

,” Phillips posted on X, formerly Twitter.

Phillips will rehab with the hope of making it back for the start of next season, but a typical recovery timeline for a torn ACL may drag it into the beginning of 2025-26. This is the second straight season that Phillips has suffered a serious lower body injury after he tore his Achilles in Week 12 of last season.

When he has been healthy, Phillips has been a proven difference maker for the Dolphins defense. In his first two-and-a-half seasons in the league — before the Achilles injury hit — he recorded 22 sacks in 42 games with 24 tackles for loss and 52 QB hits. The Dolphins’ pass rush has suffered without him in the lineup, as it lacks someone who can truly be a disruptor off of the edge in his absence.

Dolphins’ pass rush struggling without Jaelan Phillips

The Miami Dolphins have been hurt badly by a season-ending injury to Jaelan Phillips for the second straight year. This season, the problem has been especially bad at a time where Miami really needs its defense to step up and carry the load.

The Dolphins have sacked the quarterback just nine times in five games this year, which is tied for the 26th best mark in the NFL. Only the Bengals, Panthers and Falcons are worse, which is not a group of defenses that anybody wants to be lumped in with. The loss of Phillips due to injury combined with the loss of star defensive tackle Christian Wilkins in free agency last offseason have left this front without any punch or any explosiveness that changes what the offense wants to do to attack.

The Dolphins’ offense is also struggling in a major way without Tua Tagovailoa, who has been out since Week 2 after suffering yet another scary concussion. Mike McDaniel has played with the quarterback carousel a bit since then, rolling out Skylar Thompson, Tim Boyle and now Tyler Huntley to try and get the offense back on track. It hasn’t come to fruition so far, as McDaniel’s unit has failed to score more than 15 points since Tagovailoa went down.

The defense has still been solid even with the lack of a pass rush, but the onus is on them to make splash plays and play airtight football from start to finish in order to pick up an inept offense. With Phillips injured, they’re missing arguably their best splash playmaker on that side of the ball, which has led to them getting involved in a lot of field position-based slugfests.