Drive Time with Travis WingfieldDrive Time: Hidden Gems and Austin Clark Developing the Defensive Line
What is up, Dolphins, and welcome to the Draft Time Podcast. I am your host, Travis Wingfield, And on today's show, we're gonna talk about the defensive line, but not the players, a look into the work coach Austin Clark has done as the longest tenured coach on the staff. Right now, we'll talk to some of the players about him and his track record of dominant defensive lines and their development and how that can be a hidden gem for the Miami Dolphins here in twenty twenty five. Speaking of hidden gems and the coaching staff and the roster, we're gonna get into some players that could make a push this camp and this summer and spring, I should say, to change the way you think about them and the Dolphins roster in general. So we'll do all of that in a heck of a lot more from the Baptist Health Studios inside the Baptist Health Training Complex.
This is the Draft Time Podcast.
I wanted to start this show with a bit of a roster review, but not in the sense of the one that we just did.
What was that two or three weeks ago.
I want to take a look at where I think some of the hidden gems on the roster exist and how that factors into the perception of certain parts of the roster and the football team as a whole. And I always feel like this is almost like a social engineering project, stuff like this, and shoot, I'll take it a step further. We celebrated my beautiful baby girl's fifth birthday this past weekend, and by the way, the unicorn outfit she was wearing cutest thing I've ever seen in my entire life. But after all the unicorns and princesses and barbies and makeup kits and cupcakes faded, we had ourselves a nice little lazy Sunday. And what a perfect sunday to be lazy on with the PGA championship, my Seattle Mariners playing for a sweep in San Diego in first place in the American League West, which they achieved. Both those things and a pair of game sevens combing with a big Carolina Panthers win almost got those quick. Aside from that, did you guys see Brad Marshawn talk about the pressure that the Leaves feel every year and the culpability of the fans and media. I think it's worth noting that as I take a sip of my coffee here well, t year, it's supposed to beak to you, but it's coffee. I just have to say, I think that you're a little bit crazy if you don't think fans and media are part of the problem in some of these places. I'm not saying anything particular about where, but I do think it has an impact. And during this lazy Sunday, I found myself going through the entirety of the twenty twenty five NFL schedule week by week, and I always look for the windows where the Dolphins aren't playing, because for me, that's when I get a chance to be a fan. Right. I do about half the pregame shows on iHeart this last season I did, I'll probably do about the same number of this year, and that puts me on air two hours before kickoff. I do all the postgame shows, which is two hours after the clock Hitch triple zeros in the Dolphins game, and then it's time for the postgame recap podcast. And all in all, if we play at one o'clock on Sunday, I make at home just in time for a kickoff of Sunday Night Football. So Sunday Night Football is a very a very treasured part of my weekend schedule every single week in the fall. But when we play at four h five or four twenty five, I get to watch maybe the first quarter of the early window game kickoffs. If it's at the stadium here at hard Rock, I have to drive. I have to get here like two or three hours early, so I usually miss most of that. If it's at the radio station, I can watch about half the game. The whole point is I only get to watch full football games most of the time if we're playing at one o'clock on Sunday night football. This creates an urgency and an importance of the primetime slots for me as a football fan, and I'm weird. I don't merely look for good games. I want good games that are going to have a rooting interest for me. And the only thing I care about rooting four in terms of how these games go is what it does to the Miami Dolphins. I usually, or rather I should say, I used to really care about like my takes. Like I remember when Tannehill left here being very invested in the Titans, because I told Dolphins fans that Titan Tannehill was a lot better than gave him credit for, and they went pretty far a couple of years in a row, and he had a couple of really good years there with the Titans. Or when Mahomes was coming out of Texas Tech, he was my guy and I thought the Chiefs would do pretty well with him, or Kyler Murray with the Cardinals was probably one of the biggest ones. I'll never forget those debates back in twenty nineteen. But now I don't care. I just want to watch, Like maybe it's cynicism, maybe it's old age.
Maybe it's having more.
Of a valued life outside of like your hobby right watching football, like with family and stuff. But I just don't have the same emotional attachment to a lot of sports anymore. The Dolphins are in a class of their own, but when I watch, I don't know even the heat like, and I know this is a bad year for it. I just can't really be bothered to get like moved by the outcome of games unless it impacts the Dolphins or the Mariners are pretty good in that regard. But I used to be like, man, the marriage had a two run bomb, I'm jumping and fist pumping out of my chair but now I'm just like, sweet, yeah, good, we needed that. I don't I just don't get emotional anymore. But if it impacts the Dolphins, I really really care. Like, for instance, we get that Chiefs and Chargers game in Week one on Friday, right that Friday night post season opener game, I guess after the Eagles and Cowboys, like I feel pretty confident and the Chiefs winning that division this year, so there's a decent chance the Chargers are in direct competition with us for a playoff spot or playoff positioning. And while maybe like Eagles and Commanders is a better game than Chiefs and Chargers, give me the AFC matchup all day long. So this is I promise this whole point's going somewhere. And then when we play on Monday or Thursday, those Sunday one o'clock and four thirty windows, oh buddy, you talk about valuable. That Sunday one o'clock kickoff, when my dollars watching a YouTube show and my son goes down for a nap, like that is ultimate football fan time for me, where I don't get a lot of that time during the season, but those kickoffs they have to deliver because those are sacred timeslots when the Dolphins aren't playing on Sunday afternoons, and just looking at those there are some ten actually amazing Sunday slates when we don't play on that particular Sunday.
So I was.
It got to the point to where I'm looking at the schedules on my couch while my wife is making the make your own snow globe gift whatever the hell my daughter got for the million gifts that she got, and I just say out loud, I gotta say, honey, I'm ready for the football. She's gonna get here, and she's like, really, I'm not. And that's not always been the case. Like I don't enjoy wishing away my summer with all the golf and the swimming and the beach and the family time that I get. We're busy people, but I'm happy to let the calendar unfold naturally most of the time. But for some reason, I'm just ready for this year to get here. And I think, and I can be a contrarian, I'm guilty of that by by a million times, but I think it's the concept that in the past we had expectations and lofty goals and now there's this like perception or expectation that the team's not going to be very good this year. And while I don't believe that's one hundred percent accurate, I can see where certain concerns would creep in. And there's certain parts of the roster that are worse than they were last year. But there's parts of the roster that are better than they were last year too. And for I don't know how long, right, I mean, you can you all can tell me. We always heard like the offensive line was the one area that neglected and it was the only thing that mattered on the team, right nothing else matters. Well, they didn't neglect it this year. They signed a big money free agent, and they used a premium draft pick to shore up the weakest spot on the offensive line last year, and they have a second round pick from last year filling in for the guy that retired, along with two pricey veteran contracts and Aaron Brewer and Austin Jackson, albeit not pricey considering their position across the rest of the league. But they're not cheap players. They're not, like, you know, replacement level contracts, is what I'm trying to say. So they invested in that, and I think that that's a reason for optimism, and I'm not sure why it's being forgotten about so much when I've been told for so long that if we keep to a healthy and have a.
Good offensive line, we're going to be okay. And I do believe in that.
But I like being a little bit more under the radar and kind of being able to say, like, hey, you guys are wrong this time. And you know, I've been wrong plenty of times as well. But the last couple of seasons we were pretty front and clear and pretty front and center in terms of the perception of where the Dolphins are going to be come playoff time. And shoot, if you want to take the league's perception into account, there's only three teams that have more primetime games, and there's a bunch of teams that have the same number of primetime games. But they've got us in four standalone windows the NFL does after Week eight, so the second half of the season they expect us to be in the mix. Another tangent I came to realize in this discussion as I was telling him, Now, half other spots are are sports. Other sports are very localized, right, like baseball. Shoot, every broadcast is regionalized. I watched my Mariners, I watched the Heat, but I couldn't tell you the last time I watched a regular season MLB or NBA game that wasn't my team. I just could not be bothered to do that. It's not that way in football at all. But I do think there are a lot of fans that just watch their team, or at least a very small percentage of fans that really know the rest of the league the way they know their own team on the level of a Kyle Crabs for instance, or myself. I spend a lot of time doing this. It's my job, so I would I would kind of think I was a failure if I didn't know the entire league pretty well.
Right.
And the reason I say all of this, I don't know at what point along the line this happened for me, but I feel like it used to be widely accepted that the salary cap meant you were pretty unlikely to go into a season with proven solutions at every single position. Because this is not Alabama or Georgia or Ohio State, where I have three five star recruits at left tackle ready to rock and roll if something happens to my starter. Like the reason the dominant young quarterback on the rookie contract is such a cheat code is because it frees up your resources to attempt to build Alabama at the pro level. Like the Commanders don't have to pay Jadeen Daniels for what at least two more years that he's not even eligible for a new contract until till twenty twenty seven, so they can spend crazy wherever they want. Really, and this doesn't guarantee a damn thing, does it. The Niners just enjoyed the fruits of that labor to the nth degree. We're talking about jade and Daniels being the second overall pick in the draft, like brock Purdy was like two fifty, so he was way down there and made nothing for four years, and what do they get to speak of that? No titles? Now, I feel like that's a really disingenuous way to, you know, portray that the way they played the last four years the Niners have been I would sign up for that success for the next four years of the Dolphins in a heartbeat. I would love to go to two Super Bowls and play in conference championship games every year. Give me that tomorrow if I can sign up for it right now. But now they're gonna pay party. They just paid Party and they have to start shaving salary elsewhere, which leads to the loss of Deebo, Samuel, Javon Hargrave.
Who else did they lose? Javarius Ward? You know, I lost some dudes.
And trust me, you'd rather pay for the quarterback than not have the quarterback to pay at all. That seems like a given to me, But some of the stuff I read on Twitter makes me think that that's not necessarily as given as you might think. I feel like some some fans would rather have the Saints quarterback situation right now over ours, not I. And you can even point to recent champions or Super Bowl losers for that matter, which again, if you go to the Super Bowl, you had a successful season.
I don't care who you are.
The twenty twenty Chiefs, it was mostly injuries, right, but it was a pretty decimated offensive line to the point that they decided we're gonna trade Tyreek Hill and go attack the offensive line. And what's been their bugaboo for the last three years. If they have one, they don't really have one, But if you had to pick one, they don't have enough weapons around Patrick Mahomes. He went from the highest average depth of target in the league for the last and then too the last two years one of the lowest in the entire National Football League.
We don't have to relitigate all of this, but I'll do one more. The Bills, the Buffalo Bills f the Bills man.
Ask Bills fans about their cornerbacks right now or going into last year. No way they can approve upon twenty twenty three with that wide receiver corps, right. But all they did was when the most games they ever have in the Josh Allen era, well, actually they matched the twenty twenty total. They won thirteen season games that year. They won two in the postseason, fifteen wins. But you get the point, and a big part of the reason for that that they won thirteen games in a couple of playoff games and we're a fourth quarter away against the Chiefs from going to the Super Bowl for the first time since the nineties. They focused on the players that make the Buffalo Bills better, not just acquiring talent. Let's get the right pieces in here. And a big part of that would you have ever guessed this was to reduce the number of times that Josh Allen put the ball in the air. He went from he had the fewest passing attempts per game this year since his rookie season back in twenty eighteen. He went from six hundred and forty six pass attempts in twenty twenty one down to five sixty seven in twenty twenty two to twenty three, throwing five to seventy nine, so bit of a jump there, and then all the way down to four eighty three, one hundred fewer attempts in the previous season last year. My point is what you see on paper, it's not meaningless, but there is so much more context required to understand who's going to be good and who was not in the NFL. And with that it takes us into our segment. That took me fifteen minutes to get into the whole spiel here, but will pause first because the setup took the entire segment. I'm going to come back on the other side and talk about some potential hidden gems that can help flip perception with their play come September. That's next Draft Time podcast, brought to you by AutoNation.
All right, So I have broken out the what do I call this thing?
My color coordinated ninety man roster that used to be on the whiteboard back in the Lockdown days. Now it's an award document, so not quite as pretty, but I can talk about it here on the show. So I've plugged in all the rookies, all the udfas. I kept his camp body level contributors, because you just can't, like, you can't really forecast that. I think it's disingenuous to say that, oh, Jalen Conyor is going to be tied into this year, like I might think that, but I'm not going to put him there until he does it, So keep that in mind. I have some probably assessments that you would disagree with in terms of being too lofty. I'm probably more down on some guys then some folks might be. So let's just go ahead and roll through. So i've you guys in the drill by now. Blue is the cornerstone player. Green is the plus starter, which is like a pro Bowl potential player. Orange is the adequate starter who's not a pro bowler, but he's better than like league average, And you can like having him in your lineup doesn't make you any worse. That's the kind of like range you're looking for here. And then you've got quality depth or special teams. As a purple player, replacement level means I can slot anybody in there and be okay with it, and that's pink. And then red is the camp body, which means I expect you to be cut or that I don't think it can play. And then the black demarcation just means you're incomplete for injury reasons or you're too young, like Taj Washington's is on the black category because he has one year under his belt and he missed up to an injury, so we can't count on that as some proven commodity. So you guys know, I have Tongua bay Loa as a blue player, I've got Wilson as replacement level, and yours is in the red category. So the backup position still is a little bit unknown to me. You're up in the air. But I think two was a cornerstone franchise quarterback. I mean, I think it's obvious, but it's clearly not across like Twitter. But whatever running back position, I got eight Chan as a plus starter, right, he's got to prove it more, but he's an adequate startut to meet right now. And then I've got Gordon and Madison as quality depth, with Ingold in that same category. And then the rookie Knol I'm not going to talk about all the undrafted rekies. They're all going to be read okay in that camp body, but I'm not calling him camp bodies. I'm just saying like they've got to, you know, come with it and prove it. I still have Hill and Waddle as cornerstone wide receivers. I think they're two of the best players in the game, regardless of how last year went or what you think about the way they you know, didn't the way Ten didn't play for his team the right way, like whatever you want to say about it. That the talent is all still very much there. I've got Westbrook A. Kine is an adequate starter. Malik Washington, I've got him at quality depth, but he's right there like kind of pressing up towards that orange indicator. What's the word I'm looking for here? And then I've got d S. Gridges as quality depth as well. And the rest of the room is red or black and then the tight ends, I've got Jonah Smith as a plus. I think Farrell Brown I might be bumping him to Orange here pretty soon, but been watching him out there kind of run around, and he looks like he has some juice. I'm kind of kind of excited to see Faraoh Brown, but for right now, he's in the purple category. Julian Hill Pink and the replacement level, and then the rest is red because they're all unproven. And then offensive tackle, I've got Paul's adequate starter. When I expect that to go up this year, I'm not gonna do it yet because that would be disingenuous to the process, but I think that he has the opportunity to really slide in that direction. And then Austin Jackson is easily in the green category for me, probably closer to Blue than he is to Orange, but I know he's not a cornerstone player, but he's a very very good player. And then I've got a kind of unknown for Keon Smith and Larry Boorhum his quality depth. And then the rest of the room is red. And then interior. All three of my guys are plus starters, and that's look Jonahs gosh, so vite naya. Gosh, take me a minute to get back to that. I just believe in his game. I was big on him in the process. I was big on James Daniels. If I back off that now, then what's the point of the freaking podcast Back in February. I think Aaron Brewer is close to blue. He's gonna He's gonna stay green for now, but one more year like last, he'll go into the blue category. He's a Pro Bowl freaking player on the interior defensive line. We have a Blue Chipper, Zach Steeler. He's one of our four blue Chips with Tua and Hill and Waddle. And I've already got Grant in the same category as Sabi nayavit naya.
Jesus shoot, I'm gonna leave it in.
That was the podcast Live unfiltered and me accidentally saying one bad word and then coming up with the worst word that I had to bleep out.
So there you go.
But Jonah savite naya man. Golly, but that's where I've got. That's where I've got Kenneth Grant. I think he's right in that category as well. So I'm gonna I'm gonna roll with that and in fact, like not to you know, not that he hears this or anyone's gonna put pressure on Kenneth Grant because the Drivetime podcast said, but like, I expect him to move towards the blue category pretty quickly.
I think he's I think he's exceptional.
And then I've got Jordan Phillips in the orange just watching if watching him move at practice. I think he's gonna be a contributor this year right straight away. And then Benito Jones and Matthew Butler and Zeke Biggers all in that purple quality death category. Off the edge, I've got two green players and plus starters and Chop Robinson and Jaylen Phillips. Bradley Chubb will be in there if he comes back and looks the same, but I kind of have to just be a little reserved on him right now, so he goes in the orange category. I got four quality depth players there in Quentin Bellmo Kamara, cam Good and Grace and Murphy. I think Murphy climbs into the orange category this year, and maybe one more of those guys would be a huge boon for us. At linebacker, I've got two green players. I almost move Willy Gay back to orange, but I was like, no, be convicted in your take, dude, don't be a whuss, Like be like you believe in this. Let's go ahead and put him in that category. Jordan Brooks, I think is closer to blue than he is to orange at this point. And I'll put Willy Gay comfortably in green, Tyrrell Dots in an orange adequate starter, and I've got kJ Brick quality depth at cornerback. That's kind of where the issues like pop up in terms of the color coordination. I've got Kohu is the number one right now because I'm not going to put five in the roster. Yeah, I don't think there's reconciliation there, but we shall see. But he is a Your number one is an adequate starter, which you probably could improve upon that. And then quality depth, I guess I don't know we'll put where to put cam Smith and Storm Duck because I'd like, I don't think the film is good, but could it get better? It's gonna have to and if they're gonna play, definitely Already Burns in that purple category is quality depth. I put Jason Marshall in there. I'm a believer in Jason Matrie and Isaiah Johnson, but we kind of have to see it. I believe in bj Adams, but he's an undrafted rookie as well. So that's the group where yeah, it's the color coordination is not great right now. And then I put if I Mela Fon was a green player, but there's obviously a clear medical tag there at safety, he's got a he simply has to like stay healthy, and if he does, I think he's a plus starter. And then I've got I really want to push Big Morris up, but we have to see more of it. But I've got him and Elijah Campbell as Purple players quality depth. I think mc morris will talk about him here in one second, could be a guy that can push into that level. I've got Ashton Davis in the pink category, Trader as quality depth Purple, and then the rest is read. It's pretty clear where the questions are, right, and just to be clear, I'm not trying to disguise any of this, like I don't. I think it's like if you if you played a game tomorrow at cornerback, you would have a lot of questions, right, but it still may you have the biggest chip to fall, which is of course the Ramsey potential move coming. But it wasn't fun. You're racing a blue player off of a premium position off this board. But if you can replace that with another positive color, hopefully hopefully blue or hopefully green, I should say, which is where I would put Jack Jones, who's out there, or a Sante Samuel. Those are both green players to me. And then I think Razeuo Douglas and Mike Hilton could be orange players. But if you do that, I think it sets up much better for the exercise we're about to do. And I want to make this clear before I do that. I really hate the concept of hey, here's four like average players.
And one of them is going to elevate, Like you don't know that.
You can't know that, And when I grade other teams rosters this time of year, I hold that against them. So I shout the exact same thing for the Miami Dolphins, because it's like when Fantasy, when someone's like, hey give me justin Jefferson, I'll give you four like average receivers, Like, no, that's not how it works, bro, Like I need someone that can do that on their own, not four guys that do one quarter of the job. You know, it's not the freaking moneyball Brad Pitt really being common terry here And as I look up it down this roster, we know a lot about it, but there are some areas where you need some more evidence to mount, like to mount to add up before you know. And that's for better or for worse. Right, more evidence tells you were set here, we're good to go, or it tells you we need to move some things around. And going into this camp, I think there's a handful of players that could really change the way we see certain position groups. And just FYI, I'm not going to put any rookies in here. I think we've covered all of them at length the last couple of months. But I'm going to start with a guy that really inspired the entire segment and a guy that I just talked about.
It's Patrick McMorris. He is a student of the game.
He was a special teams dynamo in college as well as on defense and the way he fits and hits man like, I feel like we need that.
You saw it all over his college tape.
I think Kyle Krabs just to the rewatch of his college tape was telling me, like, dude, this guy he's legit and you saw it in the preseason and we saw it all throughout the playoffs. How big of a key it was for teams to have, you know, as they shift towards more of this ground game approach to be able to play from depth with angles and purpose and no wasted steps. He knows how to beat blocks with physicality or with quickness. He has a good recognition of route concepts, of quarterback footwork and mechanics and how that ties in the timing of a play. It allows him to anticipate and close that space. And the same is true coming from depth against the run, where you see him read his keys, anticipate where the back wants to go, Like he reads the blocks and the way they developed the way the same way the running back does. And it makes me pumped up to watch him for camp because if he hits and Mela fan Wu stays healthy, then all of a sudden, maybe you have a good safety tandem back there, Like, I don't think it's impossible. I feel better about that than do the cornerback spot right now. How about Taj Washington, This cat is smooth man. Just getting an eye on him out here a little bit in spring ball. Like he he looks. He looks the part I forgot writing this about him last April. He was fifth and deep ball receiving in college football back in twenty twenty three, behind only Roma Dounze, Brian Thomas Junior, Malik Neighbors, and Marvin Harrison Junior. I also remember Lewis Riddick listing his favorite Day three picks in Taj being among them. I think his acceleration is noticeable. He's quick. He didn't test that way a four five two forty. But I've talked about, you know, the wide receiver class this year and how widespread their skill sets are, and also how we really brought in some speed in numbers for the first time beyond reak and waddle in the last couple of years. I think Taj is now a part of that akin to what Aj Henning is in terms of the quickness and punt return skill set. Now, Taj is a guy that you could say, well, that's not a position where they have a need at or really have room for him to find his niche on this roster. But with what we talked about up top and how you cannot possibly have three backups for every position that are highly paid, highly approven guys.
You need guys like this in the fold.
His skill set is comparable to our top two guys in terms of the speed and suddenness. So if you lose Reek for a game, or you lose Waddle for a game, You're not gonna ask Taj Washington to go be Tyreek Hill for forty five snaps. But he can give you fifteen snaps at that Z position and you can game plan around the rest of the absence with a more twelve personnel or two back personnel like. That's what I'm talking about, solutions based in the event of anything. And I think Taj has the juice and drive to give himself a chance to be in a position where he could be an impactful player if called up. Here's what Lewis Riddick said about him, dynamic ability with the ball in his hands in the middle of the field, super quick. I love the philosophical fit. Keon Smith is next, and he has a chance to kind of be a poster boy of sorts, you know. Twenty twenty two camp I didn't think he looked the part. I thought this guy has to be like cut on the first cutdown day, and he just kept working and improving and got himself onto the roster in twenty twenty three. And he starts cross trading at guard last year, but then he gets hurt in the preseason and there was limited reps on tape, but those reps in the running game in twenty twenty three in actual NFL games, he looked the part. I think his quickness and ability to get out in space inside translates to guard. And if he can earn that six man position, like every team, six man plays a bunch of snaps in this league. So if he is that guy, we're gonna need him, and he could be a guy that provides you quality depth that you definitely need across the offensive line. Matthew Butler's in here. I talked about him on the Monday podcast. Not going to run that back, but he's one of the guys for me. And just to finish with the kind of entire group here, how about Storm Duck, Already Burns, Jason Matrie, Isaiah Johnson, Jason Marshall Junior, and Ethan Bulner. Now this goes against the code I mentioned earlier about not trusting a glut of guys to produce a contributor. But that's kind of where we are here. And again it's May nineteenth. Relief is probably a couple of weeks away. But right now you're looking at two of these players playing seventy five percent plus of the snaps and that's got to make you a little bit Joe philbin queezy. But I think there's good tapes scattered across each of these players games, and if there's one commonality here, the real tale of all these guys, it's other mostly big, long, physical corners. Even Matree, who spent most of his time last camp inside his game is aggression, force the issue. That's how Bonnard wants to play. If you watched any of Marshall at Florida, that's his entire game. Isaiah Johnson might be the tallest damn player in this building. He's not, but he towers over the entire cornerback room. And then Duck and Burns are the same way in terms of forcing the issue and playing up in your face. I think good aggressive, physical man corners pair the best with a stout pass rush, and I think we do have that up front this group, though, going to have to prove themselves in camp and probably get some help along the way somewhere.
So there you go. This is some hidden gems keep an eye on.
I'm really mc morris, Keon and TODs were the kind of reasons for the thread or the idea the segment here. And then you know, Matthew Butler gets signed and I liked his game a lot too, And then I wanted to add the cornerback spot because I don't think you're done at cornerback right now.
But I digress.
Let's move on and move on to segment three, where I'm going to talk about another hidden gem, this one on our coaching staff, Austin Clark. What makes him awesome? I have testimonials to back all that up. That's Next Draft Time podcast, brought to you by Autnation. So I mentioned not including the rookies in the hidden Gems segment, and if I did, I think I'd be telling you about the entire rookie defensive tackle class because in the addition of Matthew Butler, because the NFL reps an experience that he has, you could almost view him as like a polished rookie because he only played about two hundred snaps over three seasons, and there's a bunch of freaking flash and juice on that tape.
Man.
But the part that gives me the most conviction in him and to have the potential to kind of have all in through the cracks here a little bit and right into our laps is the coach he'll be working with, an Austin Clark I put together through some sound bites and just the raw data. Let's go ahead and start with the former here. Let's hear from some people about Austin Clark, and I think this kind of tells you the level of pull and respect that Austin Clark has in the building. This is a conversation about drafting Jordan Phillips and who came to the GM and the decision makers in the front office about hey, this guy's pretty good coach.
We were was the first one that came to us and Austin were like, hey, watched this from the East West and what he was doing. He's twenty years old as an unbelievable love for football, So I think we do think there's some things we can unlock with him.
So you trust an Austin Clark when he comes to you and tells you this guy looks good on tape, and then you trust that he can unlock the things that haven't been unlocked because of that coach. That is like kind of a trump card man, not to use that term on this show, but man like, if you can get youthful, talented, big strong players in here and Coach Clark can give them a clear plan of development and work them through that for a you know, a one to three year process of development, just like it did with Christian Wilkins, who right, like Wilkins was good as a rookie, he was better as a sophomore. He was great in his third year, he was even better in his fourth year, and just as good in his fifth year. Like he his developmental track was was one that you can say, like, this guy put the time in and had a coach that believed in him and really, you know, grinded it out.
So I think that's telling there.
And you know, again, Kenneth Grant just off the top, like because I've already seen enough of him to know there's something there with watching him and if there's one coach I trust to like get him to play maybe a little bit lower or a guy that can maybe help him see blocks and read blocks a little better. And with Kenneth Grant's size and physical ability and his potential like or the way he's motivated to see that potential with Austin Clark, I have no doubts about that. It's a big reason why he's a green player for me already and a guy that I think could move into the blue category by the time he's a second year player. And it really just got me thinking, you know, this guy got here with us in twenty twenty. He was an outside linebackers coach that year. He might recall that being the first year we saw Andrew Van Ginkle play significant time. It's a five and a half sax season on a part time basis. Van Ney has six sacks and ten more quarterback hits. Then he moves to the defensive line, the position group that he worked at most in college as a coach. Then he takes Zack Steeler Christian Wilkins under his wing and they start making strides and they both become like all Pro potential defensive tackles. And I know Seeler had back to back double digit SAX seasons, the most by a defensive tackle over a two year run, and you saw how much Christian Wilkins just got paid in freegency.
Case closed right there.
We talked previously about Benito Jones having the best year of his career and Deshaun Hann producing more quarterback hits over these last two seasons with the Miami Dolphins. Then he did his first five years combined with five compared to nine. We saw Raykwon Davis go get a nice pay day from the Colts and kind of do nothing there. John Jenkins went from a year in Chicago where he barely played it, coming back to Miami for two years under coach Clark, his number see a big uptick, and then he leaves and go and has two career years in Las Vegas where it seems like he kind of unlocked his game here as well. Man, you look back, there's really not a lot of defensive tackles that were on the roster for an extended period of time who didn't produce the same was true of Adam Butler in twenty twenty one. Kalais Campbell this year, and Kalais I don't have to like give coach props for him, because Kalais is that dude. But kalais like I mean, he he spoke glowingly of Coach Clark. Speaking of speaking glowingly of coach Coach Clark, Let's go ahead and go back to Benito Jones, who talked about him when he signed here last March.
A man, great coach. You know every two you need to be on the field with you know, he ain't gonna never leave you with it or whatever. So I got a lot of you know, a lot of for that guy. Like I say, he's a great coach.
And for those of you that know Benito, not a lot of words to say most of the time, but he kind of opened up there for coach Austin Clark. Speaking of guys that love Coach Clark, here's Christian Wilkins back in August of twenty twenty two.
No, I love Coach Clark's a heck of a coach. I mean, he brings it every day and he holds us to a high standard. You know, he's been doing that since day one he's been here. He just holds us to the highest standard. T He like he knows how great we can be, and he's gonna push us to be that great each and every day. He doesn't matter how hot it is, how many players we work, none of that. He just wants us to be our best each and every play. And he's such a such a good coach teaching technique. So my techniques got a lot better. A lot of other guys on the defensive lines technique got a lot better. And you know, he just brings that juice with good, bad or and different.
And then I apologize for how quiet this next one is because I just don't have a louder file, and I'm gonna turn it all the way up for you guys. But here is Zach Seeler back in October of twenty twenty one talking about Austin Clark.
He does a really good job of explaining techniques and what exactly he wants. There's not a lot of gray area. Do you see this? This is how he wants it, point blank. He's very good at that, and he's very good at getting to different players and teaching the different players how different players play. So obviously, guys, will every guy plays different. I'm gonna play different than Raykwan and Raykew. One's gonna play different than Christian and so forth.
And so I think when you factor in giving him a rookie crop of guys, and those guys are all have a shared trade of hunger and desire. I mean, you've heard the soundbites with both Jordan and Zeke Biggers. You heard the podcast with KG and the way Austin teaches, like you know how Christian and Zach said, it's so to the point and on the nose, like and here we go again with a golf analogy. It's like when you're working on the swing and you've got one central thought that you're stressing if you're coaching yourself or being coached the wrong way. You can focus on that aspect of the swing, but you can lose fundamentals elsewhere. I think the best way to describe Coach Clark is the way he teaches in a clear and concise way that allows the players not to overthink, not to get bogged down in details, and just play fast and react, but with effective fundamentals and technique across the board.
I think the proof is in the pudding.
I'll never forget sending a tweet after Zach's first contract extension here something to the effect of the Dolphins now have Zach Seeler, Christian Wilkins and Raykwon Davis under contract for the four years through twenty twenty three. And that group was literally never a problem on this football team, right. They were always like contributors to the team. Well, Zach has his contract, He's not going anywhere. You've got these three rookies on four year deals, a fifth year option for Kenneth Grant. With Butler and Jones and Dickerson all in the fold, I feel like we're going to get a pretty healthy pipeline reset at a very critical position in the scheme with a person that I could not trust more to oversee the entire operation.
What a good way to end a podcasts. We'll come back on Friday.
We're gonna hear from the coordinators Anthony Weaver and Frank Smith for the first time this offseason. We'll have that coverage for you, as well as plenty more on the Drivet Time podcast. But until then, you all please be sure subscribe, rate, review the show, Follow me on social.
At Winkle NFL.
Follow the team at Miami Dolphins. Check out the fish Tank podcast with Seth and Juice, the YouTube channel for media Availabilities, Dolphins HQ, Drivetime content, and so much more, and last but not least, Miami Dolphins dot Com Until next time.
Finza go on, Cameron, Daddy Come Home.
