Meet the new Miami Dolphins: Matt Skura discusses his health, Tua and Flores’ pitch
Center Matt Skura officially signed his one-year, $1.8 million contract with the Miami Dolphins on Friday and before jumping on a flight home, took a few minutes to introduce himself to South Florida.
Among the takeaways:
▪ Multiple teams were interested in signing Skura, but he chose the Dolphins because of Brian Flores’ “passion for the game and how much he truly cares about his players and really wanting to improve the culture of this team. I think that was a big thing for me. I wanted to go to a team that’s going to have a great culture, great locker room and also they want to win. That’s the biggest thing at the end of the day, so that was ultimately the biggest thing for me.”
▪ Despite tearing his ACL, MCL and PCL on Nov. 25, 2019, Skura appeared in 15 games last season, starting 12. He committed just three penalties and allowed a lone sack in 656 snaps, according to Pro Football Focus.
“Coming off the knee injury and then also having to deal with the pandemic last year, and also going into this year, was definitely an interesting situation,” Skura said. “Basically, having to create a home gym, finding ways to rehab and get back as strong as possible. And so going into the season, I felt really good and throughout the season felt good as well. The knee held up great. I didn’t really have any problems with it
▪ The biggest criticism of Skura last year was a two-game stretch of poor snaps, which resulted in the Ravens benching him.
Skura, asked about those issues Friday, said weather played a role in one of those games, but added: “I’m someone who really doesn’t like to make excuses. I don’t care if it’s a blizzard, a hailstorm or whatever it is. That’s something that I have to take responsibility for, so that’s been one of the main things in this offseason literally every day — snapping — whether it’s getting 10 snaps in or 30 snaps in. Whenever I can that time basically permits for myself, I’m doing snaps, doing o-line drills, doing everything I can to make myself feel prepared.”
▪ Skura spent the past three seasons snapping to Lamar Jackson. Now he turns his attention to another young quarterback: Tua Tagovailoa.
“Yeah, I think one of the biggest things is communication — him communicating to me on the line, me communicating any kind of protection, changes that we want to make and also just understanding how he sees the game,” Skura said. “Everyone’s different, everyone has different perspectives, so understanding how he sees certain blitzes, how he sees defenses or how he wants to offensive line to protect him are all things that go into it. I think for me, too, just building a relationship off the field definitely helps that as well. Lamar and I have a great relationship off the field, so I think that definitely helped us on the field. So that’s something that has always been big for me, is just building those relationships and when it comes time to play in those games, things become easy and communication becomes that much easier.”
This story was originally published March 19, 2021 at 12:19 PM.
