First Day of OTA’s in the Books

Jimmy Bourbon

9 years ago

On Tuesday the Dolphins completed their first day of OTA’s and I am pleased to announce that every player was in attendance. (Including Rishard Matthews) Obviously, the players were not wearing pads yet, so a lot of what we saw in terms of good and bad plays, need to be taken with a grain of salt.

There were some minor concerns, mainly from the media just trying to create a story from nothing, that Suh was absent for most of the voluntary activities this spring, however, a player of his caliber should be allowed to deal with voluntary team activities however he wants. However, when it comes to mandatory practice, that is something Suh will not skip. More importantly, he looked very good in his first practice, spending most of the time in the Dolphins offensive backfield. He did have 3 false starts, but that also exhibited his aggressiveness. The pay per head services sites like AcePerHead.com.

The starting offensive line consisted of C Mike Pouncey, RG Billy Turner, RT Ja’Wuan James, LG Dallas Thomas, LT Jason Fox. One thing that immediately stood out was that the coaches decided to put Jason Fox as the LT and keep James at his more natural RT position. Albert is promising to be ready to play the first game of the season, and even if he can’t, I like the idea of letting James focus on RT where he is more productive and use Fox as the LT. Offensive line coach John Benton said that both Turner and Thomas have vastly improved from last season and he believes that Thomas will perform better this season because instead of alternating between guard and tackle, like he did last year, he will only be working at the LG position this year. He also pointed out an interesting stat from last year in regards to Thomas; in 333 snaps at tackle last season he gave up 7 sacks, and in 362 snaps at guard, he did not give up any sacks, so there may still be some hope left for Thomas at left guard this season. (In addition, Benton also told us that Thomas is way ahead of where he was at this time last season, especial in regards to his skills being more refined.)

DeVante Parker continued where he left off in the Rookie mini-camp by catching everything thrown his way and was even more impressive doing it in very tight coverage against Brent Grimes. Parker appears to be the real deal, and I would say that he is one of the players that I am most excited to see play during the season. In addition, the rest of the receivers looked good catching balls, with Matt Hazel continuing to shine, and even Matthews making some very nice catches. Lastly, the coaches were not shying away from moving players around at the receiving position, mainly Jennings and Landry switching between the slot and flanker position.

On defense, it appears that Chris McCain will get every chance possible to be the starting strong-side linebacker, a position he played in college, and Jamar Taylor appears the front runner to play opposite Grimes. Brice McCain also looks to be the front runner for the Nickel position, and Walt Aikens was actually being used as the primary back up to Reshad Jones.

Lastly, even though Miami did not do much to address the linebacking group, they looked pretty sharp and fast, and they might be a lot better than what most fans were expecting.

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