Dolphins cancel joint practice with Eagles. Miami players dealing with stomach bug
The Dolphins canceled the second day of joint practice with the Eagles, the team announced Thursday, as multiple Miami players and staff members deal with a stomach bug.
The team announced it would be meeting virtually “out of an abundance of caution as a result of a non-COVID illness.”
Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel called the stomach bug, which affected “more than a couple players” and additional staff members, a “unique curveball.” He said the illness appears to be contagious and the decision to scrap practice was to prevent further spread ahead of the team’s preseason finale against the Eagles on Saturday night.
“It all comes down to wanting to be able to fully play the preseason game as planned,” McDaniel said. “... I didn’t want to have half the team drained out from a stomach bug, fight through the heat and then have depleted performance in the preseason game. Because for a lot of guys, it’s the most important game of their career. And I hold a strong amount of value in that and I didn’t want to compromise that in any way.”
The Eagles, who practiced with the Dolphins at the Baptist Health Training Complex on Wednesday, are still scheduled to practice Thursday. Philadelphia wrote in a tweet that no members of its travel party had shown symptoms to date and team medical officials were “confident the team is in a good place to practice.”
McDaniel said the emergence of multiple players with the stomach bug “may or may not” impact players’ availability for the final preseason game. Though McDaniel had not yet announced a decision on whether he would play starters, very few are likely to see the field again before the team’s regular-season opener against the New England Patriots at Hard Rock Stadium on Sept. 11.
While it’s a non-COVID illness that led to the cancellation of practice, McDaniel said the team is undertaking similar sanitary measures that have been implemented in the last two seasons as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
The cancellation effectively ends training camp for the Dolphins, whose second joint practice with the Eagles was supposed to be their final session ahead of their preseason finale. The team held 17 practices, including a pair of joint practices in Tampa with the Buccaneers, before canceling its final session Thursday. After the preseason finale, the team must cut its roster from 80 players to 53 before 4 p.m. next Tuesday.
“Unfortunately we missed an opportunity on the field today,” McDaniel said. “But all that means is that with that extra day of preparation, we get to see a product on Saturday that is not result-based. It’s an accumulation of how people have handled coaching points and how they’ve really evolved and got better.”
This story was originally published August 25, 2022 at 8:39 AM.
