If hope dealing is illegal, go ahead and mark this report card Exhibit A.

Squint a little and you can see the makings of a good football team in the Miami Dolphins’ 19-9 loss against the Detroit Lions.

Miami is 1-7, and its punter had the longest completion of the day. But Caleb Douglas is starting to look like somebody the Dolphins can build a passing game around, and a defense starting four rookies ended Jared Goff’s 30-game streak with a touchdown pass.

Here’s how each position group graded out.

Quarterback — D+

Malik Willis went 13-for-25 for 128 yards, no touchdowns and an interception. He added 7 yards on two carries and finished with a 50.1 passer rating.

Willis took a shot that Chuck Clark intercepted early in the third, but it wasn’t a particularly misguided decision.

 It was third-and-11 with a safety that was shaded to the other side of the field, and Willis had Douglas one-on-one on a corner route. By the time the ball got there, there were two defenders in the picture. Douglas never got enough separation, and Willis left the ball too far inside. Clark had room to cut it off and took it back 34 yards. 

Willis is getting better at snapping through his reads. With 11:33 left in the second quarter, Miami ran a play-action from its own 6. As soon as Willis saw the safety and corner bail into Cover 3, his eyes went right to Greg Dulcich in the flat for an 11-yard first down.

The play fakes themselves are abysmal, though. Too often, Willis tucks the ball into his chest before the running back even gets to him. What’s a linebacker or safety supposed to bite on when the back never gets close to the ball?

Running Backs — C+

Once the Lions figured out that bottling up Ollie Gordon II was about all it took to stall Miami’s offense, they started stacking the box. The second-year back went from 5.7 yards per carry before halftime to 1.5 after it. There’s only so much Gordon can do when the lanes are closing before he gets to them.

All in all, 55 yards on 16 carries is a pretty ordinary afternoon, though Gordon did pick up 11 on third-and-6 to keep Miami’s last drive of the first half alive. Kaytron Allen lost a yard on his only carry and got his 46 receiving yards from Bradley Pinion on a fake punt. Carlos Washington Jr. caught one pass for 8 yards.

Wide Receivers — B-

Miami badly needs production at receiver, and Caleb Douglas is showing the traits you want in a developing No. 1. The Texas Tech product has the size and catch radius, and he can create separation with his routes. He caught six of eight targets for 70 yards Sunday, giving him 296 receiving yards through his first five NFL games, a Dolphins record.

I’ll be Debbie Downer here. His 20-yarder with 3:30 left in the first quarter was a great catch on a poor route. Miami was running a flood concept on second-and-10, which means there is a deep route, an intermediate out for Douglas and a short route underneath. Douglas rounded his break and turned the out into something closer to a corner route. That gave Roger McCreary and Brian Branch a play on a ball that could have been picked. Douglas took it as an opportunity to showcase his athleticism and jumped between them and plucked it out of the air anyway. The separation he created at the top of the route may serve as eye candy, but there aren’t many universes where a coach would call a corner route and a go ball to the same side of the field, which means Douglas likely overextended his out route.

Malik Washington caught two passes for 21 yards, and both moved the chains. Kevin Coleman Jr. had a 16-yard run and would have had a 51-yard catch if a holding penalty hadn’t wiped it out. Chris Bell played 36 offensive snaps and got one target, an incompletion. Douglas and Washington were the only Miami wideouts to catch a pass.

Tight Ends — C

It was a quiet day for Dulcich, who caught two passes for 14 yards. Bobby Slowik dialed up a tight end screen for him in the third quarter, and it went for all of 3 yards.

Will Kacmarek caught one pass for 6 yards, but my favorite play of his came without the ball. He tracked down Detroit linebacker Malcolm Rodriguez in the middle of the field and mauled him to the ground to help clear the way for a 5-yard run. The physicality and willingness to block are already there. He can overshoot his target, though, and that’s where he needs to clean up his footwork and angles. The holding flag that wiped out Coleman’s deep catch was his, too.

Offensive Line — D

Austin Jackson got called for holding with 10 seconds left in the first half, moving Miami from Detroit’s 10 back to the 20. Zane Gonzalez hit the upright from 38 yards on the next snap. Aidan Hutchinson also pressured Willis six times in 16 one-on-one matchups with Jackson, per Next Gen Stats.

Miami got to the 7 after the fake punt in the fourth. Alim McNeill and Derrick Moore sacked Willis on two of the next three snaps, and the Dolphins settled for another field goal. Moore got him again on the next possession. All three sacks came in the fourth quarter, with Miami down 10.

Defensive Line and Edge — B+

If you told defensive coordinator Sean Duggan that Jahmyr Gibbs would come away with just 74 yards on 20 carries, he would have taken that. He did score the game’s only touchdown on fourth-and-1, but Miami made him earn most of what he got.

Josh Uche ended Detroit’s opening drive with a third-down sack and hit Goff’s throwing arm on the interception. Zeek Biggers got a third-down sack of his own a few plays after Detroit’s fake punt, and Zach Sieler dropped Gibbs for a 3-yard loss in the second quarter.

Then there’s the play where Miles Frazier took Kenneth Grant for a ride. On Gibbs’ 11-yard run in the second quarter, Frazier drove Grant about 10 yards downfield and turned him around so completely that Gibbs ran into him at the first-down marker. Grant got an assist on the tackle, but go watch how he got there.

Linebackers — B+

Jacob Rodriguez continues to show up around the ball. He finished with 10 tackles and a sack, and he got Gibbs in the backfield for a 3-yard loss in the second quarter. Jordyn Brooks led Miami with 12 tackles and dropped Gibbs for a loss of his own on that same drive.

Where I’d like to see Rodriguez speed up is when he has to sort through traffic. There are snaps where you can see the gap open before he commits to it. By the time he gets off the block and fills, the back has already picked up an extra yard or two.

Defensive Backs — B

Detroit finished with 181 gross passing yards, and 11 of those came from punter Jack Fox. Amon-Ra St. Brown caught eight passes for 86 yards, and Jameson Williams caught one for 31. Goff hit them for 48 yards on back-to-back snaps right after Miami pulled within three, setting up Gibbs’ touchdown.

Chris Johnson’s interception was the top play from this group. He had the flat in Cover 2, saw the corner route coming over the top and sank into the next window. Uche hit Goff’s arm as he threw, and Johnson was right there to pick it off and take it back 21 yards.

Special Teams — C+

Pinion hit Allen for 46 yards on fourth-and-3 on a fake punt. 

That’s cute, but it isn’t his job. He also left the opening kickoff short of the landing zone, giving Detroit the ball at its 40, and hit a 25-yard punt in the second quarter.

Gonzalez made three of four field goals, including a 52-yarder, and scored all nine Miami points.

The Lions converted a fake punt of their own when Fox found Tay Martin for 11 yards on fourth-and-7. Add in the missed 38-yarder before halftime and it was about as up and down a day as this group could have.

Overall — C-

Detroit went 3-for-12 on third down and still punted only once. It went 4-for-4 on fourth down, and Miami went 0-for-3 in the red zone. Throw in 11 penalties for 87 yards, and that’s how you lose by 10 on a day your defense only gives up one touchdown.