MIAMI — Failure isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

There are countless instances where it served as a catalyst for future greatness.

Steven Spielberg, who is known as one of the world’s greatest filmmakers, was rejected from film school three times.

Persistent failure led to monumental success for the Wright brothers, who tested and crashed gliders for years before they mastered aerodynamics, and eventually achieved the first powered flight in 1903.

Michael Jordan might not be viewed as the greatest athlete of all time if it weren’t for the beatings he and the Chicago Bulls took from the Boston Celtics and Detroit Pistons, which drove him to work harder, get stronger and become the sports legend he is.

Newly hired Miami Dolphins head coach Jeff Hafley failed during his four-year tenure at Boston College.

So what!

I have always felt that one of Steve Ross’ biggest mistakes during his tenure as the Dolphins’ majority owner was consistently choosing first-time head coaches.

He hired four straight in Joe Philbin, Adam Gase, Brian Flores and Mike McDaniel, and had no shame about it. Even after they all failed to transform South Florida’s NFL franchise.

Hafley ends that streak because of his 22-26 (12-22 in the Atlantic Coact Conference) run as Boston College’s head coach from 2020 to 2023.

While he has never led grown men — players who have full-fledged families, healthy bank accounts and usually massive egos — Hafley did come up in the college ranks during the NIL era, which created its own unique set of trauma, and skills.

“My first month on the job COVID hits. So I had to learn that everybody’s got a plan until you get punched in the face,” said Hafley, who spent seven seasons as an NFL assistant before accepting the Ohio State defensive coordinator job in 2019, and then being named Boston College’s head coach a year later.

“I got punched pretty hard. And what I learned about myself is you can get through anything if you get organized, you get detailed, and you go one step at a time, and you just go to work,” Hafley continued. “You surround yourself with a really good staff and you pour into your players, and you bring that energy.”

But that doesn’t guarantee success, obviously.

Between COVID, the introduction of the transfer portal, which allowed college players to leave their program whenever they wanted, and the NIL, which opened the door for college athletes to be financially compensated, Hafley openly admits he lost his love for coaching at Boston College because he spent just as much time raising money, lobbying boosters, recruiting fickle teenagers, as he did game planning for Saturdays.

“All of a sudden it wasn’t coaching anymore,” Hafley said. “I didn’t like the person I was becoming, and I wasn’t doing the job I dreamt of.”

So when NFL opportunities arose to return to the NFL as a defensive coordinator Hafley jumped on them, and left his college head coaching job behind.

Hafley bet on himself by going back to the NFL, joining Matt LaFleur’s staff in Green Bay.

While Hafley wasn’t a popular pick with Packers fans, he delivered the NFL’s fifth-ranked defense in total yards allowed (314.5), and sixth-ranked defense in points per game allowed (19.9) in 2024.

Last season the Packers fell to 12th in yards allowed (311.8), and 11th in points per game (21.2), but that was after having a massive late-season slide that was a byproduct of losing Pro Bowl pass rusher Micah Parsons, whom the Packers traded for right before the season, to a season-ending knee injury in mid-December.

With Parsons, Green Bay’s defense got watered down. But a first-round exit in the playoffs, which was a result of a fourth-quarter defensive collapse to Chicago, didn’t prevent Hafley from being a popular candidate for head coach openings in 2026.

He interviewed for six openings and granted Miami their first in-person interview before eventually agreeing to become the Dolphins’ 12th head coach.

Does that mean he will succeed? If we’re going to be honest, it doesn’t. All we know right now is that he interviews well.

The problem I typically have with first-time head coaches is they usually they don’t know what they don’t know. And that very well could be the case with Hafley still. But at least he has spent four years leading a football team, making the tough business, personnel and game-day decisions, building and retaining a staff, and most importantly, managing egos.

That has to count for something. Or at least it should.

“I have to wonder if other [college football] coaches see Hafley going from being a .500 coach at [Boston College] to Packers DC and three years later he’s the [head coach of] a NFL team,” Geoff Schwartz, a former NFL offensive lineman turned Sirius analyst wrote this week on Twitter.

It probably wasn’t meant as a diss, but certainly came off as one.

No guarantee he will last longer than the four previous first-timers, but at least Hafley’s a bit more aware of the journey he’s embarking on.

“I had to be a CEO,” Hafley said of his Boston College experience. “I’ll take a lot with that from there to me here. I made mistakes as a young coach, which you’re gonna make, in a lot of different ways and I learned from them.”

Let’s hope those lessons learned will speed up that learning curve in Miami because the last thing this franchise can afford is another slow learner.

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