2019 Dolphins Training Camp Thread!

I went to camp today, here are my notes(they're mostly defense, I figured everyone else was going to focus on play-by-play and who was starting at some positions)


I’m not a real big tone/organization of practice guy, but I think practice in general was interesting. They seemed to switch between unit drills and team drills pretty frequently (where other coaches will start with units as warm ups and build up to 7 v 7 or 11 v 11).

This practice also seemed different as in that it strongly favored “starters” getting reps to an extent I never remember seeing before. Most coaches in my experience have done pretty even workloads between 1-2 and sometimes 1-2-3, a lot of the mixed unit drills here were dominated by 1s.

Theme of practice was definitely red zone/short yardage/special teams.

I was sort of late sitting down, but it seemed like they *started* with unit vs. unit goal line drills even before team unit warm-ups.

As noted, Ballage seemed to get first team reps but he and Drake seemed to split pretty fairly.

Christian Wilkins was Kenyan Drake’s fullback during this unit (while Ballage had Cox).

Another interesting element is that QBs seemed to not always participate in the same drill- seemed like a couple instances where Rudock was running like a scout team QB for the defense while Rosen/Fitzpatrick were throwing to route concepts vs. air.

The 11v11/7v7 drills were *dominated* by 4-3 Even type defensive fronts today, and the “starting” defense might not have switched personnel packages- They lined up in a 4-3 Even Big Nickel against whatever the opposing offensive package/formation was.

The “starting” and second units looked like this-

DE- Charles Harris(Dewayne Hendrix)

DT- Davon Godchaux(Joey Mbu)

DT- Christian Wilkins(Vincent Taylor/Akeem Spence)

DE- Tank Carradine/Jonathan Woodard(seemed more rotational rather than one was 1st/2nds)

OLB- Jerome Baker(Kiko Alonso)- Largely on the LOS.

MLB- Sam Eguavoen(Raekwon McMillan)- Largely as true MLBs.

OLB/Big Nickel- Minkah Fitzpatrick seemed to be on the LOS towards the passing strength whatever formation or alignment the offense came up with, largely as a sort of OLB but with some slot corner looks in there.

Second team OLB was mixed between Chase Allen/Van Ginkel/Terrell Hanks/etc.

CBs- Xavien Howard/Eric Rowe(didn’t catch 2nd DBs that well)

Nickel- True “Nickel” seemed primarily Jomal Wiltz

SS- Reshad Jones/Walt Aikens

FS- Bobby McCain

In the individual unit drills, it looked like they did some work with 3-3 Diamond and the 4-2 “Extend” style Nickel fronts. They did some work that looked like they were practicing using Diamond as a base and sliding either Reshad Jones or Walt Aikens in as a second ILB in reaction to a guy motioning from split to in-line.

Some other random notes-

The run scheme seemed mostly zone-based(inside zone largely), solid split between one and two back. Seemed disproportionately outside zone in short yardage/goal line(Which was a Chad O’Shea thing as red zone coordinator in New England)

Mike Gesicki seemed to get a lot of work split, and especially with fades.

Tre Watson looked pretty good when he got on the field(re-aligned the defense, quickly identified a couple of things).

 

Much appreciated Galant. I don’t have espn or cable. So this is awesome news to be getting. Thanks for your effort.

 

Thanks for all the great camp updates Galant!