Honestly, I almost skipped this one. Ollie Gordon trending in the last week of September means exactly one thing: waiver wire. Somebody in your league grabbed him Tuesday morning, the ESPN and CBS recaps are all about Week 3 winners and losers, and you're wondering whether a Dolphins running back is worth a claim. That's a fantasy question, not a watching question.

Except it turns into a watching question about ten minutes later. Every fantasy manager I know does the same thing after picking up a player: they try to actually see him play. And here's the part that made me sit down and write this. The Dolphins are a genuinely awkward team to follow without cable, and the advice you'll get from most cord-cutting sites ("just get RedZone") is wrong for this specific situation.

So let me give you my take first, then the plan I'd actually follow.

My take: if you care about one player, RedZone is the wrong tool. I love RedZone. I've paid for it in some form for years. But RedZone shows you touchdowns, red-zone possessions, and the last two minutes of close games. It does not show you the second-and-seven carry on Miami's own 35 where a young back either earns more snaps or gets pulled for a pass-catching set. If you're evaluating Gordon, or honestly any Dolphins skill player behind the starters, you want the full broadcast. And for the Dolphins, the full broadcast mostly means CBS.

The durable answer

Miami is an AFC team, so the majority of their Sunday afternoon games land on CBS. Fox picks up a handful of cross-conference matchups. Primetime is split the way it always is now: NBC and Peacock for Sunday night, ESPN and ABC for Monday night, Amazon Prime Video for Thursday night. And the league keeps sprinkling in one-off exclusives on Netflix and YouTube, so check the official schedule before you assume a game is on broadcast TV.

That CBS-heavy schedule shapes everything below.

If you live in South Florida, the single best purchase you can make is an antenna. I keep saying this on this site and I'll keep saying it: a flat indoor antenna runs $25 to $40, and in the Miami market it pulls in CBS, Fox, NBC, and ABC in uncompressed HD, free, forever. That's most of the Dolphins schedule in one shot, and the picture is better than any streaming app. The catch is the obvious one. It only works in-market, and reception varies by building, so buy from somewhere with easy returns.

If you'd rather stream in-market, Paramount+ with the Premium plan (roughly $13 a month) streams your local CBS station live, which is the cheapest legitimate way I know to get most Dolphins Sundays without a bundle. The app is fine. Not great, fine. Live feeds occasionally lag the broadcast by a bit, which matters if your group chat is faster than your stream. Two things to check: that your ZIP code actually gets the Miami CBS affiliate, and that the Premium tier is the one you're buying, because the cheaper plan doesn't include the live local channel.

Now the hard case, which is probably a lot of you. If you're a Dolphins fan or a Gordon owner living outside South Florida, your local CBS station is going to show whatever CBS decided your region wants, and it usually isn't Miami. There is exactly one legal way to reliably get every out-of-market Sunday afternoon game, and that's NFL Sunday Ticket, sold through YouTube and YouTube TV. It costs several hundred dollars for the season, the price changes year to year and drops as the season goes on, and there's a student discount that's a real bargain if you qualify. I won't quote a number because I've watched it move three times in two years. Check YouTube's current pricing. What I will say is that if you're paying for it purely to scout one running back, that's a bad trade. If you're a fan who watches every week anyway, it's the honest answer.

The live TV bundles are the middle path and I use one of them myself. YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, and Fubo all sit in the low-to-mid $80s per month and carry CBS, Fox, NBC, ESPN, and NFL Network. DirecTV Stream is a few dollars more. Sling is the cheap option at roughly $50 to $60 depending on the plan, but Sling does not carry CBS in most markets and only has Fox and NBC in select cities, which for a CBS-heavy team is close to disqualifying. I'd only go Sling if you're pairing it with an antenna for the broadcast channels, and at that point you're paying Sling mostly for ESPN and NFL Network.

NFL+ is the one I think fantasy managers overlook. The base plan is around $7 a month and streams your local and primetime games live, but only on a phone or tablet. No casting to the TV. That's a real limitation and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But NFL+ Premium (around $15 a month) adds full-game and condensed replays, and this is the feature I'd actually pay for in your shoes. A condensed replay gets you every snap of a Dolphins game in about 45 minutes, no huddles, no commercials. If you want to watch every Gordon carry and decide for yourself whether the usage is real, that's the tool. Premium also includes RedZone, so you get the highlight machine on Sundays and the film-study version on Monday.

For primetime, you piece it together. Peacock (about $11 a month) has the NBC Sunday night games. Prime Video comes with a regular Prime membership and covers Thursdays. ESPN's own streaming service carries Monday Night Football, but be careful about the tier, because the cheaper plan is essentially the old ESPN+ and doesn't include the main ESPN channel. Check the plan details on ESPN's site before you pay.

Free options, briefly, because there are a few real ones: the antenna, obviously. Most of the services above run free trials, and Paramount+, Peacock, Fubo, and YouTube TV usually offer at least a week. YouTube has streamed one regular-season game free to everyone in recent seasons. And NFL+ tends to offer a trial early in the year. Stack trials carefully and you can watch a few weeks for nothing, which is a perfectly reasonable way to figure out whether you care about a player before you pay for him.

What's true right now (late September 2026)

Gordon is trending because of Week 3 fantasy usage, not because the Dolphins changed anything about how they're broadcast. Waiver wire runs early in the week, so if you want him on your roster you're deciding before you get another look at him. My suggestion: check the Dolphins schedule on the team's official site for Week 4's kickoff window, because that single detail tells you which service you need this week. Sunday afternoon means CBS or Fox. A primetime slot means Peacock, Prime Video, or ESPN. If he's a one-week flier for you, use a trial. If you're in for the season, the antenna-plus-NFL+ Premium combo is what I'd run for under $20 a month in-market, and Sunday Ticket if you're not.

That's my plan. I've changed it before when the league reshuffled its TV deals, and I'll change it again, but the core has held up for a few seasons now: get the broadcast channels the cheapest way you can, and pay for replays instead of highlights when you're actually trying to learn something about a player. Enjoy the game, and good luck with the claim.

— Marcus Bell