Drive Time: Chris Grier Presser and Positional Calling Cards

For us as Dolphins fans, we're gonna look at each group and mention the calling card and the question of those units, and we're gonna have us solve for most of the questions there. And we'll also hear a bunch of sound from GM Chris Career, round out the practice squad so far and gets you updated on the latest news around the Dolphins roster. From the Baptist Health Studios inside the Baptist Health Training Complex.

hours to even a week from now. I think it's the best thing about the NFL going from four preseason games down to three because it gives teams a little bit of extra time to kind of let things breathe and find out where they are before the actual install of game planning goes into that Week one, you know, Jacksonville game. And speaking of that, we have a waiver wire claim as the Dolphins put a claim in and were awarded receiver Grant Dubos from the Green Bay Packers.

Let's go ahead and here from Dolphins GM Chris Career on the traits that attracted them to do bos.

things of that nature. But playing under Matt Lafleur for two training camps in a full season should really help him kind of catch on quickly. But the special team's

work jumps off the page. I don't think that Azukama offered that as much, and his blocking is something that really stands out about his game as a guy that can be one of those players that comes in in those red zone situations after Reek and Waddle have given you forty yards on the drive combined, and you go to the running game down in the high red zone.

He's one of those guys kind of like a River Craycraft that you can count on as a key blocker down in those spots, and I think he can beat one on one coverage, which is what you get when you're the number four to five receiver in this offense, right You're not going to see double teams ever, when you have ten or seventeen. So I thought that was a very nice addition to a room that needed a body.

And we're going to go over the practice squad we have so far, which does include Erica Azukama, but Dubo's I can see the real fit here. Pretty excited about this player. And something else Chris Career mentioned was the feedback they got from the Packers' coaching staff, which as you know, is very tight with Mike McDaniel, give him Matt Lafleur's time on staff with McDaniel back in Washington.

So I followed up on my Debo's questions, saying, how common is that to get feedback from a team on a guy they just cut, And Chris Greer said, not the film the player in terms of what he is as a football player, but you're looking for stuff that you can get back from him or back from the team on the person that you're getting.

end of the day. That makes the ultimate decision whether you can put a claim on someone.

evaluate them in the same vein as the team. And I actually did think that Jack Driscoll had a good summer, but he is the one it goes by the boards and the corresponding move with the Deboe's acquisition, and that was how Chris Greer opened his press conferences. They asked about the offensive line, and he said something you've heard plenty of times before and made fun of.

And so I think the important thing is they they all work together. It's a really cohesive unit and just watching them work together is great. Every day they hang out together, so it's a very close knit unit. That said, yeah, we'll have someone in the practice squad like we always do, and just for your information, we released Jack Driscoll recently because he claimed Grant Dubo's wide receiver and so that

was the roster move for him. Jack's a good kid, worked his tail off is just unfortunately a numbers crunch for us, but we're confident in the offensive line, so yeah, you know, it's just one of those it's you know, Mike and I just we always kind of chuckle, you know. I know you guys made a joke about me saying that more you guys are more worried about it than we are. But internally that's how we feel about our group here as a as a team.

opportunity to get back on the field. Nakwan Jones is a defensive tackle the Dolphins acquired from the Arizona Cardinals. In fact, let's go ahead and run some audio on him, as Chris Greer spoke about his game. A guy that is a pretty good fit here, I think for the Dolphins defensive line.

was nice to see. And then nak Onan Jones, I mean we talked about it there with Chris Gream. I think he's he's got some ability to play in this defense on that nose tackle position, which could also serve as a guy that maybe fills in if Benito Jones is not ready to go in Week one. Hayden Rucie also back. That shouldn't be a surprise. I think he has a future on the football team. Jordan Colbert had a nice camp as well, kind of a special team's ace on that back end, and maybe some deep deep

safety help. And then there's a reporter out there that's not official yet, but Dwayne Eskridge, now granted hasn't done anything as a pro, but you go back to his Colorado tape, he again kind of has that Azuokama type of game where he is big, he's physical, he's a jet sweep guy, he's a run blocking guy. I loved his game at Colorado, didn't work out in Seattle. Has not been a good pro so far, but he reportedly

we'll join the Dolphins practice squad. So you get two receivers there actually three with the bows going to the active roster. You fill in two of the spots on the defensive line, you get need them back, you get Roochie in here. So pretty good looking practice squad so far, and we'll have more for you guys on that as it rounds out. So we have I guess an idea of I don't know what you'd call it, ninety five percent of what the ross was going to look like.

So I think it's a good time to go through it all and play a fun game that I'm going to call the calling card and the question what is the calling card of each of these rooms for your Miami Dolphins. And we're going to go ahead and start where we always start at the quarterback position. It's the timing, the anticipation and the accuracy of tu a tongua bai loa. Those are sort of built in functions of the offense

when you've got Tu at the controls. And I think that's also the thinking with Skyler Thompson as he heads into his third season here coming from an offense in college that was, you know, five or six terms on an armband or even a poster board on the sideline with cutouts of SpongeBob, SquarePants, Creamsickles, Mountain Dew and Scott Vampell, Like, that's your play call right now, you have twenty five word play calls that are a little bit tougher to

communicate than your six play wrist band calls. And then with Tua, you know, I retweeted that Manti Teo video from Good Morning Football where he talked about throwing to spots before the receiver has indicated what the route might be. And that's just a description of elite anticipation. And that's why Tua is able to manipulate defenses as well as he does. But it also reduces the time you need to hold a block in pass pro and in today's NFL with all these dynamic pass rushers, gosh, that is

so so valuable. And then in his third year, you see the confidence in the huddle at the podium kind of has you know, fu money if you will at this point and when pressure is in his face, you know, in a brief preseason stint, I think he's showed you that confidence in his you know, he's on his way to that field general category that Manti Teo talked about.

And I just came off the practice field and watched him do this drill where he threw like attacking the lion of scrimmage, but on the move to his right and then flipping the hips open. There's just a different level of juice and escapability to his game this year that I think is going to go a long, long way. These are all reasons that I just mentioned that you opened the checkbook for your quarterback and commit to him as your franchise guy with two hundred million big ones.

The question here is winning the big game, right. It

just takes one to undo a narrative. I just watched the two thousand and four highlight of the season opening game between the Patriots and the Colts and Mike vander Jack misses a field goal to open the game and they lose in that season opener, And it was supposed to be like, oh, that the Colts might finally beat the Patriots, but they didn't, and Peyton Manning was like zero to five at that point against the Patriots, including playoff games, and they would go on to lose to

him again in the playoffs that year, and then finally two years later they got the breakthrough beating that Patriots team, and that kind of shifted the narrative around Peate Manning's career, who at Tennessee didn't win the Big One and to that point in Annapolis had not won the Big One. I think for Tua, he played well in the Philly

game last year. I think he played well in the Dallas game, and then in spurts against Buffalo and Baltimore the first Buffalo game when they were able to you know, match touchdowns with the Ravens and Bills throughout the first like quarter and a half of that game, two quarters of that game. But I just want to see that breakthrough performance like you guys all do as well, and I love that we'll have plenty of chances to do

it down the stretch. I think, you know, who knows, if the Jets stink again, which they usually do, then that gauntlet is suddenly reduced in toughness by like forty percent. And I don't think the Browns quarterback can play football anymore because karma seems to have caught up to him. And so if those those three teams stink, then half of those six games to end the season aren't supposed

to be that tough. So we'll see what happens. I think the solve here for this position, for the concern is that I think they showed you that more options to force the defense to not be able to match up on a slot receiver or tight end who cannot get open against their fourth or fifth guy is a key aspect. And then also just execute, don't drop passes, don't make poor decisions, don't have bad operation in the

KC game. In fact, Chris Greer touched on this. I want to go ahead and end this segment with this commentary from Chris Greer when he was asked, what do you think you guys have to do to improve your one and six mark last year against playoff teams?

the Kansas City and Germany. You know, we had a couple of miscues at the end where we didn't you know, function the way we should and so at the end of the day, looking through it, and it's just talking looking through situations, really spending time on you know, talking to our players, going through situations football basically and what it is. And that's just my opinion. But also I think we have the players to win, very confident in them.

So for us, it's just finding that way to get over the humplet like you said, and it's we feel confident in what we're doing and Mike and the staff have done a great job and the scouts and working through it. So I'm very excited to see what happens this year.

your host Travis Wingfield, brought to you by AutoNation. Running Backs up next in our roster review post fifty three man cut down Day, and for running backs, the calling card is the speed and I have been spending a lot of time going back over some of the origins of this offensive system and kind of parsing out what

the key elements are. And the cool part about this coaching tree is how everyone puts their own flavor on things, and nobody has really incorporated unadulterated speed in the way that Mike McDaniel has and the way that we can threaten the edge, which coincides with having freaky, freaky athletic tackles that are a big priority, and it forces teams

to make a choice. I better get out there and get my wits, because if I don't, then we're gonna have ISO blocks with Julian Hill or you know, Tron Armstead or Patrick paul On one hundred and ninety pound cornerbacks who just have no shot in those like all they can do is hope to bring down the offensive tackle and prevent him from getting a second body, like that's the only thing they can hope to do in those spots, and then it's Raheem Moster or Devon h

Chan one on one against the safety to decide if it's a twelve yard gain or if it's time to call out Jason Sanders for the extra point operation and the way that neutralizes the pass rush. The ability to mug up in the a gaps or even drop a safety into the box, that is the calling card, and quite frankly, it's why I get in these these tiffles on Twitter, and I keep seeing people talk about it

even today. Everyone's mad online right now. Like, if you want to feel better about it, and there's no way to say it, say this without sounding like an absolute elitist. I don't want to come off that way. I hope I don't. But if you want to feel better about it, like study the offense, learn the origins of it, learn about the fixtures that make it go. Because when you understand that, it's easy to see why they finish so good every year the last two years. Okay, but that's

not all they feature. Because Raheem is one of the most underrated physical runners and all the football. I think Devona is going to see his receiving numbers go crazy this year. And in fact, on Friday show, we're going to have the great Scott Barrett from Fantasy Points come on the podcast and talk about Devon as a fantasy

player and why he's so bullish on him. And then I think Jalen Wright gives you this very nice wrinkle with his inside decisiveness to incorporate some inside zone change ups or maybe even some man some power scheme running downhill. So maybe the calling card is three backs who can kind of do it all, but also the speed and how it dictates everything else, everything else in this offense with all the overplay that it creates. A last note before the question here, I think that you're about to

see this Dolphins backfield produce its best receiving season. It's Terry Kirby in nineteen ninety three, nineteen to eighty four. The question for the group here, I think if the question is if we lose two guys to injury or the full bat goes down, then you really don't have a question. I think it's one of the most stable rooms, not just on the team, but in the entire league. And since I don't really have a question, that means I also don't have a solve wide receivers they're calling

card to me is their nuanced detail. I know, I know, Travis, it's a track team out there, four to two speed. But you know what, We've seen a lot of guys run very fast and produce very little in this league. John Ross, jakeem Grant was really was very very fast. It's the toughness, the commitment to the craft, the willingness to do the dirty work that makes Tyreek and Wadle both special in my opinion. They maximize their routes. They

don't short change it an area of their game. They spend all off season crafting and perfecting and working on and understanding what role they play in creating the all important space aspect of an offense. They don't short change their steps, they maximize them. They mix up their routes to look different each time. I think that standard. It's so tough for a young wide receiver to step in right away and be productive. And Coach Welker is as demanding of his guys as anybody in this league, and

good because look what it's produced. Certainly not a C graded receiving core. When you have those two guys, I think that's what makes OBJ OBJ as well. For what it's worth, it's what makes River Cravecraft so well thought of around here, and we'll miss that for as long as he's down. But these guys are true pros that really play the possession like it's supposed to be played. And oh, by the way, they also happened around four to twos, which is obviously a hell of a lot

of fun. The question here is the workload and health. The OBJ saga, it's a little annoying, I'll be honest with you, guys. They've talked about it today, with Chris Greer saying that they knew this was a possibility. OBJ wanted to be up, but they decided to go down on the pup to have the long play more in mind, which I think totally tracks to kind of combat what we talked about with the late season, you know, downward trends.

I think they're thinking, we'd rather have the best version of our team in December versus September when this guy has had a lot of injury issues the last few years. And I know, but again, please trust this is you know, more geared towards ten and seventeen. Like, I just feel like we keep them fresh with rotation, but maybe a little more time and then not missing so much time

with the injuries. Like that's the only knock on Waddle, right, because they're both tough, they're both wired a certain way, and Reek is like he plays through some stuff. Man, I just need Walla to avoid the nicks and bruises that led to him playing just over half the snaps last year. You got to have more than fifty five percent of the workload for Jalen Waddle. And you know what, like stop dropping the damn football too, like Reek. You know, my man dropped a touchdown on Philly, had the drop

fumbling Kse that was the difference there. Also dropped a deep shot on third down that would have given us a first down in the red zone. Dropped a touchdown versus Baltimore, dropped a critical third down in the finale prior to the Deontay Hardy punt return. Like, make those five plays and the season goes entirely different, and maybe even the one seed is in play or close, and maybe you're closer to two k yards as well. I'm

just saying he is the best in the league. But I don't think it's crazy to ask the best player in the league to finish even more plays. They're there for him to take. And we heard from Chris Career about how you beat playoff teams, like that's it, man, Like you don't have to tear your entire operation down because you drop two balls in critical games, Like, just

play better, just execute better. That does happen every year in the National Football League, And it's okay to go back and watch the tape and come back from it and saying we got the horses, we have the guns, we just have to better execute. I'm not sure how you solve the injuries issue, but to solve for the reak thing, and he said this, just lock in more down the stretch. He said he lost his lock in down the stretch last year. We can't have that tight

ends collective multiplicity? Is that a confusing term. I think this room is hilariously perfectly built. And by that I mean that John who's one of the best receiving tight ends in the game, and you can point to his production as a pushback, and I just don't care about that, because situation and usage matter and when he's been maximized. He had eight touchdown seasons. He's averaged eight point three, eight point six and ten yards per target in three years.

And in this game, looking at the stat sheet doesn't do you anything your eyeballs can't do. Just watch the man. He is an absolute menace. And trying to attribute his skill set from what a defensive coordinator running an offense in New England doesn't matter to me. That's not important. I know what I see with my eyes, and this is a good player. And then Julian Hill is this devastating blocker who executes our system so damn well. Those are rap blocks coming around the edge. And this is

why I love John new Smith so much. Now we can throw in I don't know, eight or ten jet motions a game with a tight end. And now on that seventh play, maybe you get the overplay you want in the backside and you can hand it to John new Smith who gets the ball with ten yards of space before anyone could even touch him.

in this offense. It's going and getting these freaky athletes where they are, cut them off at the pass and force them to play sideways a post to downhill. And you wouldn't give a fighter jet a big runway if your goal is to keep him grounded. That's how you view these pass rushers. Go get them, don't let them

build up speed. And when you look at the parts like Armstead third year here, Rob Jones, third year in the system, Aaron Brewer, he's brand new but quite literally the best fit in the system in the league for this system, like literally Liam Austin, Kendall, Lester All in their third year here, Jack Driscoll gets cut. He was heading for his first year, probably didn't like where he was at with the development in the system. And then Isaiah Wins in his second year. I think about Coach

alluded to the technical refinement that he has seen. Back after the game on Friday against the Bucks, I think about how they attacked the off season. Let's go ahead and add weaponry. Let's watch our quarterback take the next step. Let's watch the offensive line do the same thing in the same way that we can further instruct from a bucket of experience we already have and just continue to

get better at what makes this whole thing work. And you know, like they had the resources this offseason to build what they saw fit to fix those issues, and they told you what they thought those issues were with how they spent the money. That's my whole point. I think you should trust them. What do they know though? Right? I mean that's we go over this every single podcast.

This seems like I'm let's go ahead and finish up this segment with soundbites here or a SoundBite I should say from Chris Career on Andrew Meyer, kind of the surprise keep of the Dolphins roster, but had a pre damn good preseason.

Can you win in those critical downs and shortyards? And in fact, I think I have the solve here because did you know that since McDaniel's arrival in twenty twenty two, no team has a better conversion rate on third or fourth down and short which is four yards or less

from twelve and twenty one personnel than Miami. They're number one in the league in that did you also know that nobody had a worse conversion rate in those same situations from eleven personnel, so Odell, John Hu, Jalen all these guys should help you a be more diverse from eleven personnel, but also b go to more twelve and twenty one personnel because twenty one could be you know, Jalen Wright and Devon h Chan for instance, or the for instance in the case of scenario A is John

new Smith is better than Durham and OBJ when he gets back is better than Braxton or Cedric for that matter. So that's kind of the solve there. That's the offensive line. Let's go ahead and take our last break rate there, come back on the other side and do the entire defense. That's next Draft Time podcast, your host Travis Wingfield, brought to you by Autodation Interior Defensive Lines. Where we start this off, and I'm not sure how to coin this, but it's a lot like Baltimore in the sense that

we have two guys that do everything really well. They're massive, their ninetieth plus percentile in length and peer strength, and how that allows the linebacker play behind them to do exactly what they do best. But also the rotation built around that for any given game plan, personnel grouping, or particular snap. And I think this depth and rotation spills into the practice squad as well. It's not just the roster guys, it's the whole sixty nine man operation with

you know, Nakuon Jones, with getting Jonathan Harris back. I think the way this group can hold against double teams with what we have at the linebacker and edge spots when they're all healthy, just makes so much sense.

get Jones and Harris back. But I think that you know, this is a spot that could still use a little bit of TLC even with those two moves of the guys coming back to the practice squad off the edge, the ability to play multiple spots, which is a theme of this entire defense. It's kind of how the whole thing was built. When we have two and fifteen full go Chubb and Phillips, there's not a better tandem that can play all three downs, dominate the run, and set

their own table for the pass rush. Phillips and Chubb are basically their own full five course meal. And perhaps this analogy sucks because they bring the meal to the table to serve it on the fine chine that they brought out to eat the food that they cooked. They just do it all man. But what makes them so unique is how effective they can be from that three technique or the four I technique or the five technique, and those positions are basically on the outside shoulder of

the guard to the outside shoulder of the tackle. Just different positions on the defensive line there. And if I'm a guard who sees Jalan Phillips across from me, I'm telling my right tackle, hey, Bud, I need your help here, and he's looking back at me saying, this guy out here, Chop Robinson has a one to six ten split. I need to get out there if I'm gonna have any

chance of cutting him off. Otherwise we're gonna have the Jesse Davis on aj Epanessa back in twenty twenty one when he ran directly through Tua's ribs and broke them on the convert where you flip Chop Robinson inside and

he mugs up over the center. That multiplicity makes it tough to game plan for the question for this room, it's just the early season availability, right, and how nice is our schedule to give us a heap of that well less than established offenses off the bat, I should say, outside of that Buffalo game, I'm so grateful that by

the time we get to the second Buffalo game. We get those guys back, We get the Bills and the Rams a nice two weeks sandwich against Las Vegas and New England before Green Bay, the Jets, the Texans, the Niners, like you get it. We should have our guns back by then. But I can understand apprehension about this group early on totally justified. And by the way, beach Ub is close, He'll be back when he's eligible. That's pretty

much a guarantee. Off ball linebackers, same as the quarterback man instincts, anticipation, and the ability to play faster than your opponent. I'd add the vertical speed, and by that I mean as a blitzer or in coverage running the other way. I think when you consider stacking straight backer pairings, like one guy goes and causes the pile up in their linebacker reads that and scrapes off of his butt to fit a gap, I just can't imagine a better

duo for that than Brooks and Long. For how they get their keys and how they go, it's fun to watch, and it will only Bills. We go along here and Anthony Walker plays that way too, and they all just have thump. I thought we saw that with Duke Riley at times as well when he came in for Jerome Baker last year and got off to a hot start before things went backwards for him. The question here is how quickly does that happen for them? Because I don't

expect it to gel right away with those guys. I think you'll feel awesome about this group this time next year, And I can certainly understand apprehension with getting them up to speed early. And the soul for that could be as simple as reducing the snap counts and certain situations for guys, and that might come at the expense of a backer and passing situations for another defensive back. Maybe it's like Jordan Poyer or Marcus may comes down and plays the buck or plays the leo linebacker.

I think you have something of an embarrassment of riches in terms of options here, Like if there's a team, you know, say the Chiefs, that you want Ramsey to shadow Kelsey, then you probably need more Ethan Bonner on the outside. Or if Ramsey is going to shadow Garrett Wilson on the outside, you probably need more slot reps. And that makes more sense for Cater COOHU. They can

dictate terms because of how flexible this group is. The question, I just don't really have one outside of a Ramsey injury. That's every team that's ever played that right, your star player goes down, it is probably gonna hurt you. Captain obvious stuff. I love this room and listen tomorrow's episode and realize how many teams are super thin at cornerback. And to that point, Chris Greer totals today that a lot of teams called trying to trade for Ethan Bonner

this offseason. The Safeties their temperament, that's their calling card. All these guys love to hit and play the game one hundred miles an hour. We saw it right away with Javon's first game when he put a lick in a forced five on none other than John hus Smith and that Patriots game. Also that Ravens game when he came from depth and had a crushing blow on Devin Doubty on the sideline. You know what Jordan Poyer's about. Marcus may hits everything that moves in that game against

the Commanders, especially and Elijah Campbell. All he does is make presence felt on covering kicks. Safeties have to be flexible, they have to support the run. They need to be able to match up and coverage in the system. And they ask a lot of these guys. They're deep and they all share that similar mindset. I think my question here is can we match up on coverage outside of Javon Holland I do have some apprehension about that. So that's the podcast tomorrow. We're going to come back and

do the NFL predictions. I'm so fired up to tell you guys about the two hundred and seventy two game rundown. I did assign records to everybody picked the playoff games, season awards, all that fun stuff. Talk about every team for a minute. That's tomorrow Friday, A Dolphins Fantasy Football show with Scott Barrett and then this game week. Baby, We'll take the weekend off and come back on Monday with more podcast from me from Drive Time from the

Dolphins Podcast Network. But until then, you all please be sure to subscribe, rate, review the show, give me a follow on social at winkfold NFL. The team at Miami Dolphins. Check out my guys in the fish Tank podcast with Seth and Juice. Check out the YouTube channel for media availabilities, draft time content and brand news banking showed.