For many Miami Dolphins players the next four weeks are critical
By Brian Miller
The Miami Dolphins training camp will be coming to a close very soon but a players best shot at making the final 53 will come over the next four games.
For many Miami Dolphins fans, pre-season is nothing more than a return to football. Meaningless games played in August with the hopes of escaping without injury while fine tuning schemes and starting line-ups. That is not the case for other players.
While to the fan these games are meaningless, to the players sitting on the edge of the roster, these games are the most important they may ever play and they may be the only games they ever play.
Imagine fighting through the pain and stress of training camp only to see your dream killed on the final week before the regular season. For a lot of fans, especially some of us older fans who found high-school tryouts to be stressful, it’s 10 fold for these guys chasing their dreams.
There was always that list that a member of the coaching staff would pin to a board outside the locker room. You scanned for your name and if it wasn’t on there you walked away and hoped for either another chance for whatever reason or next year. Not everyone made it then and not everyone will make it to the NFL.
This, for some, is the last shot. If they miss it, they are in the working world with the rest of us but with a really cool story about how they spent one summer trying to make the Miami Dolphins roster. This year several players are on that edge.
Rashawn Scott has done everything and more that has been asked of him. Adam Gase talked about his resilience in the post practice session with the media on Monday.
"(What do you like about WR Rashawn Scott? I know that receiver room is loaded with guys but what is it going to take for him to make this team?) – “I brought this up last week. He doesn’t look around. He’s not worried about anybody else but himself. I’ve always appreciated that about him since he’s been here. He’s a competitor. Right when you think he’s … He’ll be back against a wall and he finds a way to fight himself into the mix. He’s doing the same thing again. He’s making big plays, he’s not making mistakes. He’s doing a really good job on special teams. He knows how to get to that level where all of a sudden now everybody is kind of talking about him. Now it’s going to come down to how are we going to play in the preseason games?” – Adam Gase via MiamiDolphins.com"
This isn’t the first player or time that Gase has mentioned the importance of players in pre-season games. This is their chance to prove they belong even if it is against back-ups and other players competing for jobs around the league. It’s an audition. Not just for the Dolphins team but others as well. Standout or go home.
For players like Scott, these games are as important to their future as the regular season games are to the team as a whole. Especially at a position that is already pretty set.
Scott will be hoping he can showcase enough for a potential sixth receiver spot behind DeVante Parker, Danny Amendola, Kenny Stills, Albert Wilson, and Jakeem Grant. He would need to beat Leonte Carroo and Isaiah Ford out of their potential spots. He has no eligibility left for the practice squad.
There are battle like this all over camp that we hear little about and those players that do make the roster from 45 to 53 may not stay long enough to see a game. Replaced by someone else whose tape in some pre-season game was better.