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via Imago

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via Imago

If the Dolphins wanted training camp to feel like a fresh start, the football gods clearly didn’t get the memo. Miami’s 2025 camp has felt less like a tune‑up for September and more like an extended medical drama. The secondary has been shredded, the offensive line looks patchwork at best, and fans at the Baptist Health Training Complex have been forced to watch more injury updates than big plays. But this isn’t a new problem either. In 2024, the Dolphins finished with their first losing record since 2019. Injuries gutted their roster – Tua Tagovailoa missed six and a half games, the run game collapsed from 5.2 yards per carry to a pedestrian 4.0, and the defense went from a sack machine to a ghost town. The offseason was supposed to be the reset button for Mike McDaniel. Instead, it’s just training camp, and it feels more like a stress test.

Day 9 rolled around at the Baptist Health Training Complex, and instead of smooth progress, it was déjà vu for a team that keeps tripping over its own health chart. Mike McDaniel tried to set the mood. “Good morning. False. Great morning. Let’s go,” he told reporters. When asked why it was a “great” morning, his reply landed like a dark punchline: “Because we’re another day closer to death.” Not exactly ‘Hard Knocks’ material, but hey, honesty counts. That’s a man weighed down by the reality of another season built on crutches. Close to giving up? Maybe not literally, but when your rallying cry is basically an obituary line, you’re not exactly pumping life into the locker room.

The coach’s dark humor reflected the weight hanging over this camp. Jaelan Phillips limped off again, sparking flashbacks of his Achilles and ACL nightmare years. His update – “I just got leg whipped, ya’all. Chill out. Just a bruise” – was reassuring, but nobody’s buying relaxation in August. Especially not McDaniel, who already has Austin Jackson and Alec Ingold sidelined. D’Wayne Eskridge, another hamstring. Kader Kohou? Out for the year with an ACL tear. At this point, Miami’s official depth chart might as well be printed on an injury report.

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The frustration boils down to this: Mike McDaniel is running out of bodies, and he knows it. His defense, once built on Bradley Chubb, Phillips, and Christian Wilkins, now resembles a jigsaw puzzle missing half the pieces. Even the reinforcements – like safety Ashtyn Davis, who arrived on a one‑year deal – are wobbling off practice on crutches. The Dolphins keep talking about ‘next man up,’ but at some point, there are no men left. That’s the weight that has McDaniel joking about death instead of talking about life.

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On the bright side, center Aaron Brewer finally returned after missing eight sessions, giving the O-line some much-needed stability. He slotted back into 11‑on‑11s, and his presence gave the offensive line a pulse. But one guy jogging back into drills doesn’t erase the cloud hovering over camp. If anything, it only highlights how fragile this roster feels – and how close McDaniel looks to just throwing his hands up. But while McDaniel’s words made headlines, Tua’s honesty might have been even more revealing.

Tua admits his own training camp struggles

Instead of celebrating clean stat sheets or hyping himself up, the quarterback admitted he’s been failing at his own personal benchmarks. Miami’s QB isn’t grading himself on touchdowns this camp but on details. “I’m not really basing it off of what the result is or isn’t for myself in this training camp,” Tua said on 30th July. Footwork, timing, reads. By his own admission, he missed two of three goals in that day’s practice.

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“I have about two or three things max that I have for myself that I’m focusing on for each practice that I do out there. I can tell you two of the three things I did not do really well today. So that’s what I’m saying. It’s not result-oriented, because I know for myself what I wanted to get done, and I wasn’t able to get that done today.” Grim honesty, yes – but it beats pretending. Even Tyreek Hill, after Tua’s public call-out, admitted he needed to win back trust. For now, Miami’s leadership looks sharper than its health report.

So yes, McDaniel may sound like a man ‘close to giving up.’ But his quarterback? He sounds like a man trying to rebuild from the ground up. The Dolphins don’t need empty optimism right now. They need brutal honesty. And for once, they’re actually getting it.

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