ESPN and Football Outsiders are releasing a series of articles, playing off ESPN’s “30 for 30” television series, in which they go back over the past 30 years and rank the 30 best units, and individuals, in that span. They started with the best offenses on Monday and released the best defenses on Tuesday. The Miami Dolphins did not appear in either of those lists - but they did show up in the “worst defenses of the last 30 years” subset in Tuesday’s article.
The 1987 Dolphins received a +24.4 percent grade based on Football Outsider’s DVOA (defense-adjusted value over average) metric.