He also knows this love for hunting helps him as a football player.
Obviously, anyone capable of taking down a boar brings an element of nasty.
But he also points to the patience of mainstream hunting. Sitting in the woods. Staying calm. Waiting to strike. There are parallels, and all of this is exactly what the Dolphins need. In August, Sieler was rewarded with a three-year, $30.75 million deal. He moves exceptionally well for a human his size. In the wild card loss to Buffalo last year, Sieler scooped up a Josh Allen fumble and returned it for a touchdown in one fell swoop of athleticism uncommon for any 300-pounder. We’ve seen more such movement this fall, such as getting on his high horse to track down the mobile Tyrod Taylor. He got to the QB near the sideline, dove, tripped him up, forced an incompletion.
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Six games in, he’s playing the best football of his life. Sieler is already up to 22 tackles and four sacks. Two of which came in that 31-16 win over the Giants. (The Dolphins had Sieler mic’d up.)
Last week, against Carolina, he shook free to sack Bryce Young on third and 18.
Ash knows his friend’s personality gives this star-studded team balance.
“He doesn’t really care what his role is or what he’s asked to do,” Ash says. “He is going to do it at the best of his ability and really just take ownership of that role. Even going back to his days at the Ravens where he probably felt like, ‘Oh man, I could really help them out here.’ You never heard him complain once about playing time or ‘this person’s getting more reps because they were drafted higher’ or any of those things. He just kept working.”
Unsurprisingly, he’s tight with another ass-kicker you know well: Wyatt Teller. The Cleveland Browns’ mauling guard was actually hunting with Sieler in Florida when he took down that 10-foot gator. They share a love for football’s violence. Yet, there’s no hesitation. The true key to his rise? Sieler cites his “mentals.” How he thinks through those 60 snaps in a game. Sieler takes technique to heart, and credits Dolphins defensive line coach Austin Clark for helping him see a new game.
What Sieler loves most about the NFL is that any lineman, any play can get the best of you.
Each snap is its own game within the game. Sieler processes all film study, scans the line for all potential clues, the ball is snapped and — as he says — “chaos ensues.”
Here, he breaks down a typical play:
“You get the defensive call, you get the front, you get lined up, you get ‘OK, they’ve got this package in, they’ve got this in, there’s this down-and-distance on this part of the field. You take all that in — ‘alright’— and then that last second, you just take that last breath right before that ball snaps. It’s almost like a second of silence and then just ‘Boom!’ The ball snaps and just you go from there. You’re right. You’re wrong. You react.”
Alignment on the line of scrimmage alone can win or lose a play.
“That inch, 2, 3, 4 inches of difference is the whole world. It’s all about angles.”
Leverage is then gained or lost in a millisecond. In this sense, like Atlanta Falcons vet Calais Campbell, he views defensive line play as a game of Texas hold ‘em. Sieler studies the man in front of him as if they’re at a poker table — Is this stance a true sell? Is it a fake? The more he plays, the less he is fooled. Which means he more often than not wins those critical inches. To the point now where Sieler lives in an actual house. That wasn’t case early in his NFL career. Back when he was toggling on and off the 53-man roster — when Sieler lived in a self-described world of “Are you in the NFL? Are you not?” — he lived in a RV. It’d make nomadic NFL life easy.
The lack of WiFi wasn’t ideal. Sieler needed to stick around the Ravens facility to access the Internet. But he loved living at a campsite, for $900/month, “in the middle of nowhere.” Out in the woods, Sieler could watch deer walk all around him each day. When the Dolphins picked him up, Sieler settled into an RV campground on an intercoastal for $1,200/month. He’s a practical man. Towing his entire life with him always made more sense than shuffling in and out of apartments through the NFL madness. Hannah was always cool with it, too. A basketball player at Alabama, she fully understood the sacrifice Sieler was pouring into this sport — and the fact that he’s so freakin’ competitive.
Sieler admits he cannot shut it off.
The college kid who struggled setting a fantasy lineup is now trying to wreck your fantasy matchup.
Nor can he sit still.
Even after inking that whopper of a contract, he’d much rather install everything with his own bare hands. Be it the speaker system in his car, the fencing around their property or their entire security system. Sieler burrowed into the attic himself to handle all electronic wiring. It’s the engineer in him. If their vehicles need any work done? Hell no, they’re not calling the mechanic. Sieler handles it. (“I’ll do it myself. I know it’s done right.”) A refreshing perspective in a world where we all simply press a button on our phone to get anything we need, right down to food and transportation.
He enjoys heading south to the Florida Keys, to Marathon, and going fishing with a buddy. The loss of cell service, out on the Atlantic, is viewed as a blessing. All conversation is face to face. Nobody’s on their phones. Other times, he’ll throw on some classic rock and work on his 2013 Jeep Wrangler. Doesn’t matter if it’s 95 degrees. Sieler pulls the axles, lifts it, finds something, and it brings him total peace. Of course, he’d try changing a wheel with the Red Bull Racing team at the F1 Miami Grand Prix.
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Fresh air, he knows, is good for the soul.
That’s why any spare time Sieler does have is spent building up his foundation, Sieler Safe Haven, which helps get kids outside. He has taken a quadriplegic child out to hunt gator, iguanas and deer. He loves taking kids from Miami who never spend time in the great outdoors to central Florida and the Everglades. Soon to be a father himself, Sieler knows the pitfalls that loom.
Society pushes everyone to become addicted to screens — young.
Technology isn’t all terrible. This conversation, after all, is taking place over Zoom. But as Sieler notes, screens become the ultimate time-suck.
“For kids and adults,” he says. “How many times does someone just started scrolling and you just get lost in it and it’s all of a sudden half-hour goes by? That’s why I love to hopefully spark a passion with kids. To go out in the woods. Especially when you have no service. I love that. Then you have no connection.”
No, Sieler won’t be planting a cell phone anywhere at Hard Rock Stadium. No backflips for him. He’ll stick to assisting Christian Wilkins with his Power Ranger-themed celebration.
And that’s what gives this Miami Dolphins team a perfect balance. Another record seems to fall every time Mike McDaniel’s offense takes the field. Fun, to be sure. But they’ll need such yeoman grunts to exchange body blows with teams such as the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday night. Teams that choose to bludgeon.
Bully ball awaits.
They’ll need Zach Sieler.
“I’m a competitor,” Sieler says. “I want to be the best every single day — and to not stop.”
