Dolphins players: ‘Sky’s the limit,’ but to get there they must overcome some obstacles
Miami Dolphins players who have, like you, watched the personnel department and coaching staff restock the roster with what everyone believes is more and better talent (quantity and quality), are optimistic about what the team might do once games begin in 2020.
You might say these guys believe their winsome prospects for the coming year don’t go far enough.
Win-a-lot would be more like it.
“The sky’s the limit,” defensive line holdover Davon Godchaux said Thursday.
And how else to feel when the team just spent an NFL high $250 million on contracts for 12 new free agents, including approximately $100 million guaranteed, and also added 11 new draft picks, including five in the first two rounds?
Add this to a team that won five of its final nine games last year and we’re cookin’ with gas, right?!?!
Well, possibly. But before anyone puts the New England Patriots, Buffalo Bills and New York Jets into a skillet, there’s work to be done. There are obstacles to be overcome. And Dolphins’ players know this.
And they know some of the issues are magnified by the current inability of all NFL teams to meet and practice as if it was a routine offseason, which could have an especially injurious effect in Miami.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s difficult not being there because we are very young,” quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick said. “There’s going to be a lot of new faces, whether it’s guys they brought in through free agency or guys they brought in through the draft. A lot of new faces, a lot of youth.
“So with that, you want to get on the field. You want to start practicing. You want to start learning the system and learning each other.”
Said simply, it’s hard to have a good team when the team hasn’t been together. And because the Dolphins have so many new faces, so many new moving parts, that puts them at a greater disadvantage than, say, a veteran team that has been together for multiple seasons.
There’s no better example of what this means than the 2019 Dolphins. At the beginning of last season, Fitzpatrick was actually introducing himself to an offensive lineman in the huddle one weekday and hoping for protection from that new player only days later in the regular-season opener.
No wonder the Dolphins weren’t even representative early in the season.
But by the season’s final month, when everyone was on the playbook’s same page, the Dolphins played better -- certainly good enough to beat New England on the road in the season-finale.
So, yes, the 2019 Dolphins lacked talent but came together late in the year.
And now the 2020 Dolphins promise greater talent. But the time they have to come together may be limited.
“Everybody says, ‘Oh we got a quarterback,’ “ Godchaux said. “None of that stuff means nothing unless we go and put the work in. Which I know we want [to do]. If we go and lolly-gag and not put the work in in practice, it doesn’t matter if we got a first-round quarterback.”
Godchaux believes coach Brian Flores will continue, as all coaches do, to expect big things from his players while also demanding they work for those things.
“Like I say, with coach Flo, he’s going to be consistent with who he is,” Godchaux said. “He’s going to expect great things out of you. If you did something great last year, he’ll expect the same out of you. Having that mindset as the head coach will always keep us on our toes.
“He’s always going to try to create competition. And creating competition is what makes your team elevate to the next level. So I think by him doing things like that, I think the sky’s the limit for our team in the future. If we just keep, when we go out to training camp, day by day just chopping wood.”
While everyone knows hard work is necessary to hone the Dolphins into a winner, both Godchaux and Fitzpatrick agree there are pieces now in place that will pay dividends after that honing is done.
“I think they’ve evaluated this team,” Fitzpatrick said. “They got to watch 16 games last year and figure out what they like and what they didn’t like and for us, as players, we sit back and hope we can be part of it.
“You trust they’re doing the right thing and bringing in the right guys. The holdovers and the guys that are still here are guys that obviously they liked last year and have some of the right attributes and right things they’re looking for.
“And, you know, having the fifth pick in the draft I wouldn’t say it was a successful year last year, but I think there’s some stuff that happened that we could really build on.”
The question will remain how good of a team the building process will ultimately deliver.
“I think it’s our time,” Godchaux said. “Why not the Miami Dolphins? We kicked it off with a good draft this year ... To me on paper, the sky’s the limit. But paper doesn’t win games. You still have to go out there and work at it.”
This story was originally published May 21, 2020 at 3:31 PM.
