“Is it ugly for everybody? No. If it’s pretty for the defense, it’s ugly for the offense. If it’s pretty for the offense, guess what? It’s ugly for the defense.”
The Dolphins are aware of the perception — locally and nationally — that this training camp has not yielded the type of results that will make them contenders in the AFC East.
The biggest misconception from anyone watching practice?
“That we’re sorry,” Dansby jabs back immediately. “We’re going to shock a lot of people in due time. It’s the preseason. The first game isn’t until that Monday night on Sept. 12. That’s when the [stuff] gets real. That’s when the real bullets start flying, when everything counts.”
Public hope, of course, is important for certain reasons within any NFL organization. Hope sells tickets.
But hope from the outside, which currently might not exist, does not matter right now. The players believe the hope on the inside, which they adamantly say is plenty intact, is what will matter when the regular season begins.
Until then, players say, it’s dangerous to read into anything.
“It’s amazing how many times you’ll hear how somebody was out of position or Jason Taylor got slammed by Lydon Murtha in a scrimmage,” Taylor said. “No, he didn’t. I was supposed to go inside. I did my job. People can say things, but they have no idea what they’re talking about.”