Dolphins’ Jackson explains what happened to him. McDaniel addresses scheme query
When Dolphins right tackle Austin Jackson reinjured his troublesome right big toe in the regular-season opener at the Colts, he was presented with two options:
“I could get surgery on it now [mid-September] to fix it,” he said, “or try the conservative approach, casting it up to four weeks, then do rest and rehab and see where I was at, see if I could go.”
He chose option two because the surgical option would have ended his season.
He’s glad he did. In his first four games back after missing 10, Jackson has augmented the pass protection on an offensive line that allowed no sacks in Quinn Ewers’ first NFL start. In 146 pass blocking snaps, he has yielded one sack and just seven pressures.
Missing those 10 games “was definitely a lot of frustration because I was always pushing for the training staff to let me back out there earlier,” he said. “But they were pretty adamant that the time I needed to heal properly was what I needed. I was eager to try it out earlier.”
His toe travails began Aug. 2, when he was stepped on during a practice. Jackson revealed last week that the initial injury, from that training camp practice, “was a really bad hyperextension. I messed up some of the bone in there and cartilage and that’s what the first injury was.”
He sat out a month and came back for the opener but “took a step and hypextended and reinjured” the same toe.
He said “I would call what I have turf toe. There are a lot of variations of it.”
He said he will need to have surgery after the season.
Jackson acknowledged his poor injury luck has been frustrating. He missed the final nine games last season after knee surgery.
Jackson played in 17 games in 2021 (Brian Flores’ final season) and 16 games in 2023 (Mike McDaniel’s second season) but was limited to two games in 2022, mostly due to an ankle injury.
“Last year didn’t finish the way I wanted it to,” he said. “This year, I was looking forward to playing the whole year. I take the good with the bad. I’m glad I can play some games this year.”
He also was upset with himself about his run blocking in Sunday’s loss to the Bengals.
“There were a couple plays I wish I had back in the run game,” he said. “A couple plays in the run game I got beat by a linebacker and wasn’t able to clear lanes for Achane. I’ve got to fix that stuff.”
Jackson is due $9.9 million next season (none of that is guaranteed) with a $15.8 million cap hit. If the Dolphins decide to part ways, his cap hit would be $13.8 million if the Dolphins release or trade him before June 1, but just $4.3 million after June 1 (with a $9.5 million hit in 2027).
Incidentally, Jackson and Patrick Paul, the Dolphins’ two starting tackles, both reached out to general manager Chris Grier after he was fired Oct. 29.
Jackson said he “thanked him for being part of my part of my process to get me here and creating an environment [to allow players to flourish].”
Paul said he texted Grier “and said how much he meant to me. He sent me a long message back saying he was proud of me.”
Short yardage formations
Before the season, football analytics guru Warren Sharp wrote a lengthy piece about how the Dolphins are far more effective in short-yardage situations when they run out of spread-out, three-receiver formations than when they used tighter packages.
After converting 10 of their first 12 short-yardage attempts this season, the Dolphins have been short on six damaging ones in recent weeks, with many of them using those tight bunch formations.
So why doesn’t McDaniel spread it out more on third- and fourth- and short? Here was his full explanation on Monday:
“Those are great questions. The problem solving comes through the very specific defensive tendencies and what they have in their defensive system and how a lot of times you’re trying to add a gap for them to defend. If you bring people in tight, sometimes the blitzers, if they blitz in that situation, you can keep them one gap further away from the mesh point or the handoff.
“I think realistically football is a humbling game. I kind of appreciate it from a standpoint of everything is always on the table. When things don’t work, it’s not wrong to say do the opposite, but you have to have reasons and whys in how you do everything. Every single time you have a failure or if you have a combination of failures, the important thing is not to be hardheaded, it’s to really problem solve, attack and do things for the right reason.
“You don’t just do the opposite and hope; you open your mind to all things including could we have spread them out more, what implications will that have on our tackles and what defenses – this past defense in particular, they like to go a set heavier than whatever you’re in so if you’re in 11 (personnel), they like to play base. You go 12 (personnel) or 21 (personnel) and they like to play heavy. Different set of problems to solve each and every week, but the idea is to do the best that you can with the information and you’re vulnerable to any sort of questioning when the results aren’t what you want.”
This story was originally published December 23, 2025 at 12:37 PM.
