After ‘difficult’ first season in Miami, will Season 2 be better for Daniel Kilgore?

Football sees your best-laid plans.

And laughs.

And then grinds them into the ground with its cleats.

Injuries in this game are as random as they are crippling.

And sometimes fixing a problem only makes it worse.

Like on the Dolphins’ offensive line.

Or more specifically, the center position.

Mike Pouncey was a very good player for the Dolphins for years. But his health was unreliable.

He missed nearly a full season’s worth of games between 2013 and 2016 due to chronic hip issues that even he acknowledged would ultimately result in replacement surgery.

So the Dolphins cut him last offseason after trading for Daniel Kilgore, whom Adam Gase, Chris Grier and Mike Tannenbaum saw as a safer (and cheaper) bet.

They bet wrong. Pouncey played in all 16 games for the playoff-qualifying Chargers. Kilgore lasted just a few weeks before going down for the season with a torn triceps muscle.

Bad decision or bad luck?

We will know more in the months to come.

Kilgore, 31, is one of few 30-somethings to survive the Dolphins’ roster purge, largely because his contract is so forgiving. The Dolphins owe him just $2.4 million this year, and that’s assuming he hits all of his per-game roster bonuses, according to Over the Cap.

So how does he feel six months removed from his injury?

“Old,” Kilgore replied. “No, I feel good. I feel good. This South Florida heat really keeps the joints feeling good. I feel pretty good.”

Kilgore is the third-oldest player on the Dolphins roster, younger than only literal graybeards John Denney and Ryan Fitzpatrick.

Given the Dolphins’ roster composition, it would be stunning if he’s not the Week 1 starting center.

And yet ...

“There’s always competition at my spot,” Kilgore said. “Always. You know just as well as I do that they are looking for younger and cheaper guys. So there is always competition and if you don’t feel there is competition, then you’re in the wrong spot. For me it’s always, there might not be a guy rotating with me but I’m competing with myself. There is competition across lining up to the ball.

“We’ve got one of the best defensive lines and that’s my competition,” he added. “I’m fighting against them every day. I’m fighting to get better with my offensive line. Competition, there are all kind of phases of it. It’s not just position battles or anything like that. Everybody has got their own ways.”

Kilgore’s ways are largely unknown to the people of South Florida, outside of Dolphins HQ.

He appeared in all of four games in his first season with the team.

“It was difficult, I will say that,” Kilgore said of 2018. “It was the first time, spending seven years out west in the Bay area, there were a lot of nuances to everything and moving my family across the country. It was difficult but this is home now. I love South Florida. My wife and I love it and we love the fans here. This is a top notch, one of the best organizations you could ever work for in the National Football League. I’ve just enjoyed my time. Each and every day I come to work, I enjoy it.”

This story was originally published May 28, 2019 at 7:20 AM.