Analytics
Every Dolphins season measured the same way. Point differential and Pythagorean win expectation reach back to the first season in 1966; opponent-adjusted SRS and EPA per play begin when play-by-play data does.
60 seasons shown
Point differential per game
Every season since 1966. The cleanest single measure of team strength that reaches the whole franchise.
Luck: actual wins vs. Pythagorean
Positive means the team won more than its scoring deserved. Exponent 2.37.
Outran their point differential
Won more games than the scoring margin implied.
- 201610-6 vs 7.6 expected+2.4
- 200811-5 vs 8.8 expected+2.2
- 197214-0 vs 12.2 expected+1.8
- 20187-9 vs 5.2 expected+1.8
- 198414-2 vs 12.5 expected+1.5
Underran their point differential
Better than the record looked.
- 20071-15 vs 3.8 expected-2.8
- 20116-10 vs 8.5 expected-2.5
- 20044-12 vs 5.7 expected-1.7
- 19693-10-1 vs 4.3 expected-1.3
- 197110-3-1 vs 11.3 expected-1.3
Play-by-play era
1999–2025 · 27 seasons
SRS — opponent-adjusted margin
Point margin corrected for strength of schedule. Zero is league average.
Offensive EPA per play
Expected points added on each offensive snap — the modern efficiency baseline.
Season by season
| 1966 | 3-11 | 213 | 362 | -10.6 | 3.1 | -0.1 | — | — |
| 1967 | 4-10 | 219 | 407 | -13.4 | 2.6 | +1.4 | — | — |
| 1968 | 5-8-1 | 276 | 355 | -5.6 | 5.0 | +0.0 | — | — |
| 1969 | 3-10-1 | 233 | 330 | -6.9 | 4.3 | -1.3 | — | — |
| 1970 | 10-4 | 297 | 228 | +4.9 | 9.1 | +0.9 | — | — |
| 1971 | 10-3-1 | 315 | 174 | +10.1 | 11.3 | -1.3 | — | — |
| 1972 | 14-0 | 385 | 171 | +15.3 | 12.2 | +1.8 | — | — |
| 1973 | 12-2 | 343 | 150 | +13.8 | 12.3 | -0.3 | — | — |
| 1974 | 11-3 | 327 | 216 | +7.9 | 10.2 | +0.8 | — | — |
| 1975 | 10-4 | 357 | 222 | +9.6 | 10.6 | -0.6 | — | — |
| 1976 | 6-8 | 263 | 264 | -0.1 | 7.0 | -1.0 | — | — |
| 1977 | 10-4 | 313 | 197 | +8.3 | 10.5 | -0.5 | — | — |
| 1978 | 11-5 | 372 | 254 | +7.4 | 11.4 | -0.4 | — | — |
| 1979 | 10-6 | 341 | 257 | +5.3 | 10.6 | -0.6 | — | — |
| 1980 | 8-8 | 266 | 305 | -2.4 | 6.7 | +1.3 | — | — |
| 1981 | 11-4-1 | 345 | 275 | +4.4 | 10.1 | +0.9 | — | — |
| 1982 | 7-2 | 198 | 131 | +7.4 | 6.5 | +0.5 | — | — |
| 1983 | 12-4 | 389 | 250 | +8.7 | 11.8 | +0.1 | — | — |
| 1984 | 14-2 | 513 | 298 | +13.4 | 12.5 | +1.5 | — | — |
| 1985 | 12-4 | 428 | 320 | +6.8 | 10.7 | +1.4 | — | — |
Dashes mark metrics that cannot be computed for that era, not zero values. SRS and EPA need play-by-play data, which begins in 1999; completion percentage over expected needs air-yards charting, which begins in 2006.
Methodology
Point differential and Pythagorean win expectation are computed for all 60 seasons. The Pythagorean figure estimates how many games a team's scoring should have produced, using the NFL-calibrated exponent 2.37; the gap against actual wins is the closest thing to a luck measure. Pre-1999 scores were extracted per season and reconciled against this site's existing win-loss-tie record for every year — a season that did not match exactly was rejected rather than published.
SRS (point margin adjusted for strength of schedule) and EPA per play require play-by-play data, which is openly available only from 1999 onward. Completion percentage over expected needs air-yards charting and begins in 2006. Those metrics are shown as dashes for earlier seasons because they are genuinely unknowable, not zero.
Every metric here is openly defined and computed from public results, so any figure on this page can be reproduced from the sources below.
Sources: nflverse (play-by-play and team season stats, 1999–present) and per-season game scores for earlier years. Regular season only.