Dave Hyde: The Dolphins’ team of sprinters is changing NFL ideas (and their high school track coaches are proud)
Miami coach Mike McDaniel has found football talents with a sprinting background to strategically use the full field, vertically and horizontally.
Lonnie Greene has a question. The veteran track coach already answered several questions about working with Raheem Mostert at Purdue: about Mostert’s rare ability to run short and long sprints; about the Miami Dolphins running back being a Big Ten champion and possessing “world-class talent’’; and about how Mostert enjoyed sprinting so much he’d tell Greene, “I can’t wait for football to be done to run track.”
But now comes his question:
“Was the Dolphins’ plan to just sign fast guys?”
This is something Jerry Hill wonders, too. He was Dolphins receiver Tyreek Hill’s track coach at Coffee High School in Douglas, Ga., even though he admits to having known little about sprinting before taking the job in 2008. He knew enough to approach a freshman that he met coaching ninth-grade football, though.
“Are you going to run track?” the coach asked Tyreek Hill (no relation to Jerry).
The coach then got a video from the girls’ track coach to study up on sprinting. All these years later, Jerry Hill still can recognize what makes a good sprinting coach.
“That team is full of sprinters,’’ he said of the Dolphins.
Next Gen Stats shows the five fastest times recorded by NFL ball carriers this year are by three Dolphins players. Hill is the fastest in reaching 22.01 mph on his 64-yard touchdown catch against the New York Giants. Behind him are running back De’Vone Achane in second and third place, Hill in fourth and Mostert in fifth.
That leaves out teammate Jaylen Waddle, who recorded the Dolphins’ fastest and the league’s sixth-fasted speed last season (21.68 mph). Waddle is also an outlier, in that unlike the others he didn’t stick with track. He looked at his posted internet times on a website and said, “Those are from my freshman year (in high school). That’s the only year I ran.”
Why? He wanted to concentrate on football. This gets back to Greene’s question about if the Dolphins just chased fast guys. Coach Mike McDaniel’s philosophy is to get fast football players. Those two components are often at odds with the other. Dolphins receiver coach Wes Welker, a small NFL receiver himself, said Hill and Waddle have changed his thinking that speed guys actually can be tough receivers, too.
That’s the winning combination McDaniel uses to strategically employ the full field, vertically and horizontally, with multiple players. It also shows he doesn’t give a split-second thought to size over speed, considering Hill, Waddle and Achane are all under 5-foot-10.
All of this has caught the attention of track coaches.
“Here’s the thing about track and field,’’ Greene said. “A lot of sports use it as punishment. Run laps. Run after practice, if you’re in trouble. Run the stairs. What you’re seeing players like Raheem do — I didn’t know if he was a football player that ran track when he was here or a track athlete who played football.”
That’s not just an offensive idea. Cornerback Jalen Ramsey still owns the Tennessee high school long jump record at 25 feet, 3.25 inches. He was an ACC long-jump champion at Florida State, but also was part of the 4×100 relay team that won the Atlantic Coast Conference his freshman and sophomore years before he went to the NFL.
“Jalen had good speed but simply amazing athleticism,’’ Florida State track coach Bob Braman said. “He’s one of the greatest athletes I’ve ever seen. Everything he achieved was done on very limited practice. His football duties, even in the offseason, were significant.”
That quote can be applied to the other Dolphins, except the “good speed” part. They always had elite speed. Mostert won Big Ten titles in the 60-, 100- and 200-meter sprints. Achane finished third in the SEC in the 100 meters — but in the same time Mostert won the Big Ten.
Hill was named the 2012 Track & Field magazine’s high school boy athlete of the year, and the high school stories remain part of his lore. One involves his first-steps acceleration causing such force that, “coming out of the blocks he’d unseat the rubber on the track,’’ Jerry Hill said.
“We tried to find a lane that didn’t happen. We went from lane four to lane five to line six to two – by the end of the year we weren’t starting on the track.”
Nothing the Dolphins receiver has done surprises his high school coach.
“I saw him stand flat-footed at 6:30 in the morning before we went to a track meet and jump straight up and dunk a basketball,’’ he said. He was, like, 5-8 then. After seeing that, you’re not surprised by anything he can do athletically.”
None of this answers the question the players banter among themselves, one that McDaniel encourages for the sake of healthy competition: Who’s fastest? Their college times at 60 meters only add to the intrigue. Mostert and Achane each recorded fastest times of 6.63 seconds. Hill’s fastest was 6.64.
At 100 meters, Hill recorded the fastest time of 9.98 seconds in 2013 at the junior college championships. Achane (10.02) and Mostert (10.15) are a clip behind. The Dolphins have had fast players; Mark Duper was a track sprinter who picked up football his final year in Northwestern State. They’ve never had a team of them, though.
“Their styles are different, like all runners,’’ Greene said. “Raheem has deceptive speed. His smoothness is such he makes it effortless. You can see Tyreek Hill’s sprinting power. He puts his foot down, and the pistons are moving.”
It’s translated into The Fastest Show on Turf. Or the Greatest Show on Surf. Or just some big numbers. Quarterback Tua Tagovailoa leads the NFL in passing yards, Hill has the most receiving yards, Achane has the highest per-carry average for a running back and Mostert is sixth in rushing yards and first in touchdowns.
And team speed?
Don’t just listen to their track coaches say they’ve never had athletes like them. As Achane said a few weeks ago after running for 151 yards against the New York Giants, “We’d beat any team in a relay.”