5 games in with 30% of snaps going to rookies on offense, it's completely premature to blame anything on willis or to predict his future.
so lets all chill on the whole willis is a bust talk until he has maybe not most inexperienced and lowest paid offense in the NFL .. but a very significant amount.
I'm using the eye test on Willis and he doesn't look good to me. I'll give you that he doesn't have the best WR's to throw to, but other than WR group, I think he's getting decent support. The OL is at least comparable to the last couple of years when Miami was at least competitive on the offensive side of the ball. The RB's even without Achane are doing an acceptable job. The TE's are competent. Now maybe WR is the most important piece when evaluating Willis from a passing perspective, but still I feel like there's been more issues than just being able to find an open WR. In fact I would say that's been one of my complaints about Willis is that he seems to be trying to do too much and not taking what the defense is giving him on a lot of plays. I see him trying to go deep on a lot of plays where there just really isn't anything there. I also see him ignoring open RB's, TE's and receivers in the flat or just beyond the line of scrimmage in favor of looking downfield. Yeah maybe that would be an issue if we had a good complement of receivers to throw to, but we don't so he needs to take what the defense is giving him and hope that he gets some help from those players in YAC etc. If he doesn't get that help then that's on those players, not on Willis.
I also see a lot of questionable decisions on his part even when running the ball. He seems to be very quick to slide at the first sign of contact. I saw a replay where he has players to both sides of him but no one in front of him and he slid down. If it was Tua, I would have said that's a smart play, but he isn't Tua, I expect Willis to make plays with his feet and get everything he can out of running play. No, I don't expect him to take on a LB head first like Tua did, but I do expect him to try to get as much as he can before getting down when there's a player right in front of him.
I can't stress enough either that my evaluation is based on his contract. You pay a guy 45M, I EXPECT results and frankly I haven't seen much in that regard. If we would have gotten Willis on a rookie contract then I'm more than willing to cut him a lot of slack, but that's not what we have. Willis is getting paid like a veteran player at his position. I expect to see him play like a veteran at his position and if he's not playing up to the level expected from the contract he signed then I'm going to call him out on it. That's where I am on my evaluation.
I also want to make it clear that this has nothing to do with wins and losses. I expect to lose every game right now, but that doesn't mean I don't expect the Dolphins to at least make a decent showing of it and the offense has been putrid. I don't mind losing, I mind being out of the game in the 3rd quarter down by 3 TD's because your offense can't sniff the goal line. I also don't care about getting a couple of garbage time TD's to lose by 7 when the defense has already done the job, that's meaningless.
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