As preseason winds down, can third-string QB Jake Rudock stick with hometown Dolphins?
Long before Jake Rudock was an NFL quarterback, or even a three-year starter in the Big Ten Conference or star at St. Thomas Aquinas in Fort Lauderdale, he was just part of a family of Miami Dolphins season-ticket holders. Bob and Kathy Rudock got their tickets not long after they moved to Weston from Pennsylvania and their son was raised, at least on Sundays, in the parking lots outside Hard Rock Stadium or whatever the Miami Gardens stadium was called any given year.
The son was already a three-year veteran by the time the Dolphins signed him in January, though. The idea of playing for the hometown team wasn’t as overwhelming as it might have been for the quarterback had Miami drafted him right after his senior season with the Michigan Wolverines.
His parents are a different story.
“For my dad to be able to come out to practice is pretty cool. Obviously, it was super exciting,” said Rudock, who graduated from St. Thomas Aquinas in 2011. “He’s like, ‘I only went to four or five of them.’ ‘That’s cool. That’s more than you’ve been to the last 10 years.’”
Rudock, who didn’t appear in the Dolphins’ third preseason game Thursday, might be approaching his final days with his hometown team, though. The preseason wraps up for Miami on Thursday with a road trip to face the New Orleans Saints and the Dolphins will finalize their roster in the following days. Rudock has spent the summer on the edge of a quarterback competition, watching Ryan Fitzpatrick and Josh Rosen compete for the starting job in Miami, which leaves Rudock’s status in South Florida beyond the weekend in doubt.
The life of a third-string quarterback always means life on the bubble.
“It’s my fourth year,” Rudock said last Tuesday. “I kind of know how this goes, so you’re just hopeful that you’re on a team and that I’m here, and if not you kind take it as it goes.”
Last season, only the Washington Redskins went the entire season with no more than two healthy quarterbacks on the active roster and practice squad at any time. Miami last season, for example, spent much of the season with three or even four quarterbacks on the active roster. Conversely, the New England Patriots, with whom Brian Flores spent his entire career before taking over as the Dolphins coach in February, have almost exclusively carried two quarterbacks on the active roster in recent seasons, leaving their third-string option to be part of the practice squad. NFL teams last season were almost exactly split on whether they kept the third quarterback on the active roster or the practice squad.
Even if he doesn’t stick in Miami, Rudock has made his case to be on a roster somewhere with his play in the preseason. Although he didn’t play in the Dolphins’ 22-7 win against the Jacksonville Jaguars on Thursday at Hard Rock Stadium, Rudock led touchdown drives in each of his first two appearances in August. He enters the preseason finale 12 of 19 with 137 yards, two touchdowns and one interception, and Flores said he will see playing time in New Orleans.
“You’ll definitely see him,” the first-year coach said Monday. “You may see all three quarterbacks. That’s something that we’re talking about as a staff.”
Fitzpatrick missed practice Tuesday in Davie with an illness, so opportunities could be even more plentiful for Rudock to prove what sort of value he brings — whether it’s in Miami Gardens or anywhere else in the country.
“Hopefully I’ve just showed that I’m a trustworthy guy back there who can make plays and move the offense on the field,” Rudock said. “I’m not really trying to think about it too much. It doesn’t help you to think about it.”
This story was originally published August 27, 2019 at 1:44 PM.