An undersized, undrafted guard nicknamed ‘Shaq’ makes unlikely run at Dolphins job

The phone calls started to pour in for Shaq Calhoun somewhere in the final three rounds of the 2019 NFL Draft. The former Mississippi State Bulldog expected he’d be picked sometime on the third day of the Draft -- and some of the teams calling him even told him they wanted to take him with one of their last picks -- but the phone call, the one telling him he got drafted, never came.

Instead, there was one from Pat Flaherty, the Miami Dolphins’ former offensive line coach and he told him the Dolphins wanted to bring him in as an undrafted free agent. Miami hoped Calhoun could overcome some of the deficiencies which caused him to slip all the way through seven rounds of the NFL Draft.

“He called me on the phone and just told me straight up that he believed I can play,” Calhoun said Thursday. “I just felt like this was the most comfortable spot for me.”

Less than a week into his first training camp as an undrafted rookie, Calhoun cracked the first-team offense on a consistent basis. The offensive lineman began running as the starting right guard last week, giving the Dolphins potential rookie starters at both guard spots, although he struggled Saturday in a pseudo-scrimmage at the Miami Dolphins Training Facility in Davie. After his worst practice of camp, Calhoun will have to prove he can bounce back with the preseason-opener on the horizon.

Michael Deiter’s spot as the first-team left guard isn’t particularly surprising. The rookie was a third-round pick in April after an All-American career for the Wisconsin Badgers and Miami immediately began touting him as a potential contributor at just about every position along the offensive line.

Calhoun’s rapid rise, of course, is more unusual. Despite starting four years at Mississippi State and earning second-time all-Southeastern Conference honors as a senior, Calhoun was deemed to short by most NFL scouts and got passed over for seven rounds in the spring.

At least in practice, Calhoun’s size hasn’t been a disqualifying problem.

“There were guys that were way bigger than me in college,” Calhoun said. “You’ve got to learn different techniques to kind of cheat the game. You’ve got to know what you’re good at and what you’re not good at — you’ve got to use your advantages. I’m shorter than most D-linemen that I face, so I use that to my advantage.”

It’s a little ironic considering “Shaq” is just a nickname he earned for his physical dominance on the basketball court. A coach at Restoration Academy in Fairfield, Alabama — where Calhoun attended high school — gave the lineman the nickname in Calhoun’s youth basketball days and it stuck.

In actuality, the 6-foot-3, 310-pound 23-year-old succeeds mostly because of his quickness and craftiness. He uses his lower center of gravity to his advantage to scramble and recover even when he gets beaten.

“My quickness, my athleticism — I believe people were sleeping on that, but I don’t know what they were sleeping on,” Calhoun said. “Obviously it don’t matter now. I’m here.”

This story was originally published August 3, 2019 at 5:34 PM.