Post Camp Twitter Mailbag and Trey Flowers Breakdown

bad questions. We'll do the Apple reviews and then get to the thread I posted on Twitter for your questions. And remember we're doing this weekly during the season as well, so each week get those five star reviews up on whichever platform you listened to, and also the mailbag on Twitter at Wingfield NFL plus, I owe you a Trey Flowers breakdown from the Baptist Health Studios inside the Baptist

Health Training Complex. This is the Drivetime Podcasts. Let's go ahead and start this thing off with some Trey Flowers coverage as the Dolphins added him to the roster this week, and I went through a few game tapes both of the Patriots and the Lions and the Pro Football Focus data to get a feel for his game. At this

stage of his career. Let's go ahead and start with the Actually, you know what, let's go ahead and start with the media from the last few days because we have both had both John Manager Chris Greer and Mike McDaniel discussing the Trey Flowers acquisition. Let's go ahead and start here with Dolphins GM Chris Greer after the Dolphins had signed Trey Flowers. Yeah, I think, you know, treys

familiarity with our our system and scheme helps. You know, he was with New England and Josh obviously and um those guys so um e Rob and those guys that he has, those guys here on on the roster, and so we're kind of looking for someone with his skill set, the guy that can play you know, all along the line of scrimmage, you know, his time in New England and you could do some rush inside as well too,

which is which will help. So I think his versatility and what he's done, you know, he's still you know, twenty eight years old. You know, Um, we understand you know that he's had you know, some bad luck with injuries a couple of years, but here he's not asked to come in here and be a star force. It's coming here. Just be a good player and help us like he is and and he's a great teammate, good person.

Everything we've heard about him is from people in New England and Detroit, but what kind of character in person? He was so um excited to add him here just us being around him just for a few days, really

really good dude. UM so excited to for him and looking forward to see how he fits in the scheme here with our guys and Coach McDaniel was asked about the reports of the Trey Flowers signing before it had been made official, and he talked about how he couldn't confirm it and was hopeful that the deal could put potentially get done. Now we know that it is. So here is Coach McDaniel on the new Miami outside linebacker. What I saw was a UM, a guy that's in shape,

that's that's ready to play. A He's a consummate professional UM with a lot of versatility to his game and length UM and and plays uh. His style of football UM is UH conducive to uh, you know, the style

we play. His versatility is attractive. So I think that point off the top with Chris career there about how Trey Flowers has had some bad luck with injury these last two years three two snaps last year, three nine back in and how we have you know, a role here where he can come in and be a part of that machine up front full of versatile, powerful guys that can just control the point and execute these many

rush games of Josh Boyer. He's a guy who's done it at a very high level within a very similar defensive construction previously in his career. And I'm really excited about that because while his one just wasn't up to his usual standard of excellence, he's enjoyed so far in his career. If you go back to his higher career in New England, his rookie season was the only year where he didn't have high, high volume production and very very efficient production. Even in the injury shortened season with

the Detroit Lions. He was really effective that year. Pro Football Focus certainly thought so they give him the second highest grade of his career there, and I think it's important to note that the one season the outlier in terms of his PFF grades his pass rush productivity and not really his runstop percentage, because that was still there, but they both came when the Lions made a scheme change, going from when Matt Patricia was the head coach there

to now Aaron Glenn as the defensive coordinator under Dan Campbell and completely different defensive principles, rules and structures. In fact, there's an article on lines dot com where Glenn talks about shifting from that two gap hold the point style to more of an aggressive, one gap up field attack. And you know this Dolphins team has guys that can do both of those things. Certainly, I mean, Christian Wilkins makes a living off of playing a billion snaps, a

billion different roles. But it's for the most part, it's typically been you know, hold your blocks, hold your gap, and and you know, get your eyes in the right spot, come off those blocks and stack things up and allow guys like Jerome Baker to run all over the place

and make plays. So Trey Flowers takes on blocks with the best of them and can move all over the formation, which we know how critically important that is down here as well, specifically on some of those sub rush packages, like on the particular instances where you want to get like a NASCAR package where sometimes you've had a ball and Phillips on the same side. Add Trey Flowers to that.

That's your you know, your past rush front. If you want to go into a deep half dollar package where you have seven defensive backs in the field and you only want to bring three or four guys like that might be your solution. You have so many different options within this defense for how guys can find their way onto the field. And then you just go look at

his tape. It's full of a lot of the same type of winds that you'll see from Emmanuel Ogba and Jalen Phillips, but it's also a mix of what guys like Zack Seeler and Christian Wilkins do because he's very, very very adept at playing through his man and playing the run on the way to the quarterback. Those long arms and powerful hands, they show up a lot on

his tape. His sacks tend to be where he'll rush upfield and put the tackle under some sort of urgency to get to a specific landmark and then change direction.

And you know, if the guy if the tackle cuts off his speed rush, he can then throw the hands and kind of take control from there because at that point the offensive tackle has to you know, redirect and shift their body weight, and his heavy hands and length allows him to make first contact but also you know, movable contact because he is so powerful, and a lot of his sack production is where he engages and discards.

He's also just a terrific second, third, fourth effort type of rusher where you know, got to go around this side quarterback moves a little bit. You know, we have lots of plays in this defense where there's good coverage and quarterbacks have to kind of extend, extend plays and make plays that way. Think about Josh Allen, who loves

doing that and it's very effective at doing that. He the kind of guy that can, you know, not just blow by the quarterback with that bad habit of just being on the wrong the absolute worst spot of the field behind the quarterback, but rather play with his eyes up and kind of track the quarterback and used, like I mentioned, that length and really good grip strength and heavy hands to defeat those secondary and third you know,

pass sets and pass block situations. So he's valuable in that regard and the terrific balance that he has to fight through some doubles and also kind of angle to the quarterback, you know, not really that dissimilar to what my camp report was on Christian Wilkins and how he's able to squeeze through those tight gaps without losing his feet and almost gaining acceleration like a good running back does to the quarterback. I've been a big fan of

his game for a while. I remember back in twenty nineteen and free agency with all the reports that he was big on the Dolphins radar. I was pretty bummed when he landed with the Lions because I thought he was going to be a kind of a defensive cornerstone type of acquisition. But I don't think it's at all a bad consolation price to get him three years down the line, where obviously, you know, things changed a lot in three years, but I think this guy can still play.

And you heard Chris Career talk about the shape that he's in, you know, at age twenty nine, that's plenty good enough for me. It sounds like a guy that was hungry to get back on the roster, and what a landing spot for him to return to this system, because when you look at his production within the system, going from seventeen through his past rush protactivity took a bit of a drop in seven point one percent to three years prior, thirteen point nine percent, thirteen point eight percent,

and twelve point eight percent. That is pressures per pass rush reps, so effectively impacting the opposing team's passing game on your past rush opportunities. And then his run stop percentage,

there's not really much of a change at all. I mean it's been better in certain years, but in eleven point nine percent, thirteen point nine percent, and eighteen it was fifteen point two and then twenty seventeen to ten point eight, so better than ten percent every single year his last four years in the system in terms of per rundown snap making a tackle within two yards of

the line of scrimmage. It's a big part of his game as well, so plays the past, plays the run, and hell, even last year in the scheme change, he was still at ten point five percent run stop right, So you know between nineteen he played over dred snaps and total a hundred and eighty six pressures and a hundred and one run stops. And now you pair him with Wilkins, Seeler, Ray Kwon, Davis, Emmanuel Ogba, Jalen Phillips, Andrew Van Gekl, Melvin Ingram, John Jenkins. My goodness, that

is some real depth upfront. So that's your crash course, Entrey Flowers. Let's do the mailbag next. But first we have some new Apple reviews. I want to go ahead and get to you guys. I put out the call a couple of podcasts ago, and all of a sudden, the Apple reviews got flooded. So I want to go ahead and read those guys. Thank you very much for making that happen. Lightning Lou, the fourth I believe is the name, uh just writes a five star review. Thanks

first listen of the day. Love the positive energy and knowledge. Love the depth and knowledge you give. Then he has a question about Alex Leatherwood and know igbanogeny and potential trade situation. Well, we know that Leatherwood was released and claimed by the Chicago Bears and No Bogs and the Dolphins roster, so I guess that kind of answers the question right away. But I appreciate that the question and the review, Lightning Loo, I hope you enjoyed listening to

this podcast and more going into the season. Up next from Kevin Reynolds twenty seven, He writes, Travis is really the first podcast right I ever listened to. I've been a Dolphins fan for over thirty five years my whole life, and his knowledge and passion for the Miami Dolphins has helped me become an even bigger fan. That's like, that's

the goal, man. I appreciate that, Kevin. That's what we're going for here, trying to you know, I find more enjoyment through more knowledge of the game, which is kind of the approach here. He says, I became a fan unlocked on Dolphins days and couldn't be happier for him to transition to the Dolphins official podcast. Talks about following

to throughout his college career. That was a fun year in twenty nineteen track and all the college players with that loaded drafts capital the Dolphins had in twenty My biggest takeaways that even though Travil has all the football knowledge and scouting information, he still comes across as a huge fan of the team, just like one of us. If you're a Dolphins fan, you have to listen to

this podcast. Thank you very much, Kevin. I appreciate that taking the time to write in next here from I like this name the Master and Margarita good stuff, five stars. He writes, born in nineteen seventy nine, fan my entire life, listen to the podcast with my eighty year old dad. Admittedly this is a team's podcast, but he provides honest

and entertaining commentary. Thank you for that and entertaining that certainly is the next biggest aspect in terms of informative that we're going for trying to accomplish here on this podcast. So I really appreciate that. And also my apologies for all the obscure kind of early mid late two thousand's early odds references that I make that probably missed the demographic that you're referring to their with you and your father. But thank you again so much that that really means

a lot. I think Alway signed it John at the end. Your name is John, so the master and Margharita is in fact John. Rob Wilson nine two writes love the show, Travis, uh perfect, love it, Thank you very much. Next one is from John s h S. Great show, give it a listen to five stars perfect. We like those short and sweet to the point, and we will take those

five stars any day. Next one here from Alkaline B. He writes, Travis was awesome at Locked On, even better, uh even better here with improved audio quality and backing. He is my source for all things fins. Thank you so much, Alkalne. It is funny, you know. The football stuff was always easy because it was such a passion, so it's more like second nature. But the improvement of the audio engineer skills was certainly a labor of love. But I'm so glad to become a second nature skill

of mine. Now, certainly you know a big part of this podcast. Um, these aren't all positive. I appreciate the ones that are and the ones that aren't as well. Here's one that I've seen several times before, often updated, which means us to listen to the podcast, which is always interesting to me. One star fan boy, same old Travis, no honesty. Well I appreciate your honesty. Ghost Sons five four, three to one. You know I've seen that name in there you time, so keep on updating them. One star,

five star. They still help the algorithm to get the podcast out to more listeners, which is the goal. So appreciate y'all. Let's go ahead and take our first break and come right back to two mail Bag segments here your questions about this Dolphin's football team. The twitter in boxes packed full. That's next here on the Drivetime podcast, your host Travis Wingfield, brought to you by Auto Nation. Alright, putting this podcast together at a time where I see

thirty six questions in the Twitter and mail bag. My apologies if I did not get to yours. We simply can't do that many. And Pat Perk, Hey, limit one per customer, sir, Just firing off seven doesn't work that way. Pat's a friend of mine, don't wear I'm not roasting our stranger on the podcast here at jaffe x y already putting my pronunciation deficiency in action here. Jaffee x y asks, how do you feel the old line will

develop with Torn Armstead coming in? Well, I'm glad you asked, because those guys like Torn arms that are easy to talk about when they are that good at football. Toron is the kind of player that makes every single person around him better. He's gonna have answers for you know, Liam Eichenberg when he has questions about how to best handle Hey, what do you want on your inside posts?

When they slant at the end in here on the on the past rush or tips for Austin Jackson on the other side about how to handle Hey, I faced you know Karl Lawson back in two thousand nineteen. He has this go to move, keep an eye on that. And on top of that, the impact he had was so tangible when he got into team drills at practice, like you can slide protection away and just trust him against literally anybody in the world one on one. I would put him in past pro against any rusher healthy

pound for pound, torn arms aid one on one. That's what he did for the Saints constantly. That's who he's been here in practice so far. And when I say there isn't a weakness in his game, that's the truth. Man. The one thing that he has been a bugaboo for him is just the injury bug. That's that's really it, which is obviously just kind of a random thing that sometimes occurs in a guy's career. Sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it happens a lot, sometimes never at all. You know.

That's for the rest of the offensive line. I just think this system is great for the types of athletes they have. We heard a lot of support and trust from Chris Career and Mike McDaniel and the rest of the staff really in terms of how they feel about the recent draft picks along the offensive line. I think you've seen that come to fruition this camp in preseason. You gotta do when the lights come on here in September, obviously,

but I think it's super encouraging. Like Rob Hunt to me, has a chance to make really really big strides this year, and I think be a damn good football player. He looks really good. Let's go ahead and get to one of Pat's questions here. You're crazy guy at Patty Perk asks Travis, when are you gonna lace him up and actually do something good for this team? You claim to love? Pat? My man me, lacing them up would be the worst

decision this team could make. Now. Maybe if you didn't get lost and drive home through the night when you were supposed to come fly down here for training camp, you could have seen that I'm about a hundred and sixty pounds soaking web, but you decided to sleep in Detroit and drive back to Columbus for some reason. You know, I look skinny next to kicker, sir, so not a good idea. Next at d Hicks double oh two zeros asks.

Do you think keeping five tight ends, two of which can run so well adds to the element of surprise from an offensive perspective? Yeah, absolutely, in the way that this defensive front has so many different roles and variations of what guys can do. You know, one with a certain front, two with a certain different type of call like a rush game, three a certain matchup where you know, player X in week two is different than player Y in week three in terms of their skill set and

you want to exploit maybe a particular weakness. It's not that dissimilar on offense. And I think that's where the importance of this camp at the skill groups on offense rotating through with different quarterbacks and among one another. You know, one rep, you'd have Tyreek with Waddle in Cidrick Wilson, and then you'd have Tyreek with you know, Preston Williams and Lynn Bowden for instance. And this offense does a good job of exposing vulnerabilities and a defense and attacking

them relentlessly. So let's say one week you have a defense that refused to go to their base package and wants to keep a nickel back on the field. Ball game, you know, not matching personnel. Well, okay, then you can line up in a twelve personnel package with two tight ends and run the football because now you have two five pound tight end blocking a you know, two hundred pounds safety or better one eight five pound nickel cornerback. And look at all the good blockers we haven't receiver

to like Trent Sherfield is a great blocker. Eric a zoo Commasher's hell can do it, Cedric Wilson can, and then Waddle and Hill aren't the biggest guys, but they'll they'll do it to their best of their abilities, which a lot of times in that position is enough out

there on the perimeter. Uh, if they make a decision to slide one of those safeties down and that package, maybe you say, all right, well, now we'll put Tyreek or Jalen in there, and all of a sudden they're thinking about the run, and now we expose that vacancy and the vertical element of their defense. So it's a matchup based league in Miami has skill groups, as coach said, where they knew they'd have to cut NFL ready players

at both running back and wide receiver. So it's a great question but this is this skill group is it looks pretty damn good out there so far? In the month of August at Darren Hersman, Hersman asks how much does the final preseason game impact roster cuts? Do coaches have a pretty good idea prior to the game based on the entire camp or does the final preseason game

really move the needle. That's a really good question, and allow me to preface it with this, I don't have intimate knowledge of that, but I do think it's a team by team case. Like did you catch the last Hard Knocks episode on Tuesday? Dan Campbell sure as hell sent the message to the team that this is like your chance to make a play and make it hard

on us as a coaching staff. He had this speech about the balance between talented players who make mistakes and guys who maybe aren't as talented but do everything right. And they even discussed how the loss of a certain player in the locker room might anger other guys on the team, just about how it's a delicate ecosystem that requires very delicate attention to detail, a very tough job. Now, coach did allude to the final spots on a to the last final spots on a roster at a recent

press conference. So if I were forced to paint with a broader brush, I would say that most of the time, teams have an idea about a good chunk, maybe somewhere between forty five and fifty players. But a good example is a guy like Kater co who you know his

level of competition at Texas A and M commerce. Now he's well built, athletic as hell, but you just can't know how he's going to handle the step up on competition, Like, yeah, he had the good All Star season this you know, back in January February, and handled that step up in competition. But this is the NFL. That's a These are the best players on the planet. So when a guy like that sticks and the coaches are like, Okay, we've got something here, that's why I think some of those quote

unquote surprises can come into play. And to finish it off, coach has been adamant about not short changing the process and letting everything play out before coming to a conclusion. So that last game on matters, So does the entire body of work too. So I hope that I hope that makes sense. Let's go to our last break here and come back with some more male bad question And

I want to tell you another Jason Jenkins story. I just can't stop thinking about the guy, so we're gonna keep talking about him here on the Drivetime podcast, your host Travis Wingfield, brought to you by Auto Nation. Let's keep the mail bag rolling here with Paul McGuire at Paul Kwan con McGuire at Paul con McGuire, Hey, Travis, this is my thirty eighth season following the team from Afar from Scotland. Wow, this is me now talking. I always marvel at the international fan base because of the

time of our games in your homeland. It's crazy. Back to Paul here. This is the most excited I've been about our roster and years great to hear season tickets have sold out. What do you sense the general feeling within the building about the team's chances are this year? Well again, Paul, thank you for your support Mowether in Scotland. The excitement is certainly palpable, although you know we have heavy hearts the last week or so here on the building.

But once things get going, I'm sure football will help kind of ease that grieving process. But We've heard this from both Chris and coach about the decisions to trim the roster to fifty three and how tough that was. You know, Tyreek certainly brings a different energy and a definitive energy, I should say that you can feel throughout the entire building. And then obviously with coaches positivity, it's

hard not to have that rub off on you. People are pumped, man, but we also know that additions don't equal success, and they gotta go out there and earn it. And I can't wait to watch them, you know, right the story of the season with their play on the field. Uh at Patty Perk, one question per customer, sir, stay out of here. At Socks Fans seventy, why haven't they sought to bring in a veteran corner They have. They

brought him Mackenzie Alexander. He was at it after true Williams went down and also in dirt his own injuries. So it happens. Then at the Tuesday press conference, Chris Career told us they're searching the waiver wire all night after Tuesday, and I can promise you that has not stopped shoot by the time you hear this podcast, we probably will have some changes as pertains the practice, squad announcements and things of that nature. I would just urge

the same message I did back in March. When there are you know, widespread social media panic about the team not being active enough before for agency is even kicked off. Like the tampering period, this isn't a process that ends in one hour. So if there's a chance to make the team better, Chris, Mike and Brandon Shure are going to do it. So just bottom line that at gave GENO thirteen what's up game? Long time man gave asks we have been Uh, we have to be prepared for defense.

Defense is to play us like they did the Chiefs last year. Right. Therefore, not as many deep shots as some might be expecting. I'm already preparing for the outrage when two goes deep one or two times the first few games, when in reality he just takes what he was given. Well, there's a lot to unpack your game, but it's all very good. First, if you're hoping to find resolution and logic on social all Borrow coaches quote from Tuesday's presser, if you hold your breath on that,

you're gonna pass out. So don't do that. In fact, tomorrow, I'm bringing back the scain the social segment. My whole stick is that it's not gonna change like goal posts will always be moving, moving, and whatever gets the people talking and clicking is gonna be selling it and driving. That's just how it is done nowadays, unfortunately. But uh, mental gymnastics two proofs one is right is more important than educating one self for the most part. So I digress.

But now is for the defensive looks. We'll see it's a great point. That's the Still the craziest thing to me about that Tyreek deep ball against the Eagles. They were in a too hish shell and they played quarters, which gives you, you know, four defensive backs gaining depth and each playing a quarter of the field. And Cheetah still you know, got on top of that. I got is a deep ball limiting type of defense and he

just ran by dudes. And the thing I love about this offense is that I think they have several routes to playing winning football within the capabilities and the arsenal

they have. If you want to play with a pair of safety is off the ball, fine, we'll run the ball until they change it, use the screen game and force him to come from that depth and make open field tackles on those freaky fast dudes out Why there are many ways to attack with the weapons you have and the skin in the system that you have, in the quarterback that you have. You want to play zero or cover one. Then we got you know, stretch the legs. Guys,

get ready to take take it deep. You go to the deep part of the field, Go intermediate, go quick game. I think you can run it. There are always that complement each other as well. Look look at where he most are on that first drive against the Eagles. All three pass plays were play action and just look at the flow of that second level trying to contend with getting width against those wide run looks and then trying

to recover to get back effective speed. Can do that with vertical stretch, but it's just as important that they can do it with the horizontal stretch. I think they did a fantastic job of constructing this thing for that, Like, I mean, you know, an offense that wants to really chew up yak for Tyreek and jalen Man and Eric and Zukama's a beast in that department Cedric Wilson had great success with it. Last year. We saw what you know, Chase Edmonds can do after the catch where heam has

that big play speed. Uh, it's it's all the way across the roster. I just think the way to recap this answer is to say that the offense is constructed to have answers for the adjustments and to go to a secondary, third, or fourth route to victory on any given Sunday, which is something every team that wants to, you know, win double digit games, make the playoffs, win a division, and be a factor in January. They all have to have that alright, good spot to call it

right there. I appreciate all the questions about which vets we should look out for, understand the questions, but I just can't get into that about who I think should be available to sign a It's not It's just not something I do here. So let's end with this. I'm gonna do a quick Jason Jenkins story today as I continue to battle with you know, how to grieve with this um you know, losses, I guess not is a case by case basis as a football term would be.

And you know, part of me says, keep it to yourself. Part of me, says the human experience is sharing it with others for empathy and understanding is the best way to do it. And also I love spreading memory of a great person. So with that, my wife is a teacher. When she first moved down here, she asked if the team could potentially give her some dolphins themed classroom supplies and I said, I think I might just know a guy that can help us with that. So Jason and

I had a meeting schedule together later that week. Are you know bi weekly thirty minutes and I'm gonna miss so so very much. I learned more in those thirty minutes than really, you know, anything else, And um, you know, think about that who looks forward to a half hour

with their boss. That's just who Jason was man. So in this meeting, after you know, our pleasant trees and his trash talk about my marriners, and as he always did, he asked about Caitlin and Caroline, and I said, well, I'm glad you mentioned Mrs Wingfield because um, she has a favor to ask of you. And I explained to him that she was trying to score some points with her new students and before I could finish the asks.

The ask he said, you know, say less, say less, fam And he goes to his computer and fires off an email. And that same week, I get home one day and there's a box full of hundreds of Dolphins pencils and rulers and stickers for the kids, all kinds of stuff. But it was the smile that stretched across his face when he processed this was an ask to give back to the community in a way. There was nothing he loved more so again, Jason Jenkins, We're gonna miss you man. That sets my That's my time today.

You all please be sure to subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcast. Leave us a rating, leave us a review. You can follow me on Twitter at Wingfold NFL. Follow the Dolphins at Miami Dolphins. Check out the fish Tank Podcast with Seth and Juice the Twitter Spaces show every Wednesday at eight o'clock pm. Check out our YouTube channel for media availabilities, Dolphins Today Drive, having Fish Tank content on there as well, and of course Miami Dolphins dot Com.

Until next time finds up Caroline, Daddy's Coming Home.