EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- Miami Dolphins coach Jeff Hafley grew up in Montvale, New Jersey, roughly 20 miles away from where his team played Sunday.
His coaching career was already well underway by the time MetLife Stadium opened in 2010, but he could still feel the nostalgia as he entered the Meadowlands complex Sunday morning.
"I have a lot of memories here, a lot of memories of my dad and thinking of me as a little kid in the parking lot as we came in," he said. "I mean, I was one of those guys flipping off the buses, and now here I am. Somehow it worked out where now I'm coaching here."
After Sunday, he'll have another memory to add to his collection.
The Dolphins snapped a five-game losing streak to win their first game of the season, holding off a late New York Jets rally for a 28-25 victory. Coming off a Week 6 bye, the Dolphins never trailed and captured their first lead of the season on their opening drive.
Hafley appeared stoic as he walked into the locker room after the game but was met with explosive cheers as soon as he rounded the corner.
"I think [Hafley] was very excited -- it was probably pent-up excited, too," Dolphins quarterback Malik Willis said. "I feel like we could have won the last few games that we played. We've been in them competing, and we just got the result we wanted today. So guys can really be super proud of what they put in, all the work they put in."
Willis turned in what Hafley called his best game of the season, completing 14 of 21 passes for 208 yards and two touchdowns, both to rookie wide receiver Caleb Douglas.
The Dolphins took a 21-7 lead into halftime thanks to a 15-play, 91-yard drive at the end of the first half, during which Willis executed three critical scrambles. The first was a 5-yard run on fourth-and-2 to keep the drive alive. Seven plays later, he scored on a 2-yard bootleg with six seconds remaining in the half.
Between those two runs, Willis also scrambled for 7 yards on second-and-6, sliding in bounds to keep the clock running.
After the game, Hafley credited his quarterback for his situational awareness.
"I think that [Willis' awareness is] growing," Hafley said. "So if you look at Malik and now the six games, the body of work -- it's like a sixth game as basically a rookie starter. So he's going to learn and we need to see him make those plays. That was actually right down in front of me. I saw him and it was good. He was decisive today. He was decisive and I thought he competed today at a really, really high level."
Dolphins players have insisted throughout the first month-plus of the season that they needed to learn how to win. But first, Hafley said, they needed to learn how to play with a lead.
The Jets cut their deficit to one score with an Omar Cooper Jr. touchdown midway through the third quarter and threatened to tie the game with first-and-goal from the Dolphins' 1 early in the fourth. Miami stopped consecutive runs for a loss before Chop Robinson sacked Geno Smith for a 12-yard loss on third down to force a field goal.
While Robinson earned credit for the sack, it was made possible by Dolphins safety Zayne Anderson, who covered Smith's primary target, tight end Mason Taylor, forcing Smith to hold on to the ball. Anderson, who was in the game due to an injury to Dante Trader Jr., said he was simply executing one of the team's points of emphasis.
"It comes down to doing your job, and I think that's something that we emphasize," Anderson said. "If a guy goes down, you just got to come in and do your job. And that play, it's coverage and the front working together. And so that's always awesome when that happens: I love when big guys can eat if we're strapping it up."
New York settled for a field goal, and the Dolphins responded with a 63-yard touchdown pass from Willis to Douglas, who beat safety Minkah Fitzpatrick down the sideline and utilized Malik Washington's downfield blocking en route to his second career score.
The Jets answered with a touchdown drive of their own and forced Miami into a fourth-and-1 from midfield with two minutes left in the game.
Facing the biggest decision of his head coaching career, Hafley asked his offensive linemen how they felt about going for it.
"When I saw the look in their eye, I was very confident that we'd get it," he said. "So soon as I saw that, there was no doubt in my mind that I'd go for it ... Once we made the decision, I knew we'd get it."
Left tackle Patrick Paul said there "never will be" a time when the Dolphins' line won't want to go for it in a situation like the one it faced Sunday, and he appreciated the trust Hafley put in his players in that moment. Willis got the first down on a quarterback run up the middle, and the Dolphins wrapped up the victory with two kneel-downs.
The win snapped Miami's longest losing streak since 2022 and left the Los Angeles Chargers as the only winless team in the NFL. Hafley said he wanted this win for his players; the Dolphins are the youngest team in the NFL and had 15 rookies active for Sunday's game. A result like this validates the process they've undergone over the past several months.
Team captain Jordyn Brooks said he doesn't feel like the team is done yet.
"Honestly, I feel like we still haven't even got that result. You know what I mean?" Brooks said. "We won, but we want to win in the way that we know we can dominate. I feel like it was a game we could have dominated. So always trying to figure out where we can get better, and win in a more convincing way -- but I'll take any win at this point."