With five weeks of regular season play behind them, the Dolphins enter the bye week with a focus on self-scouting every phase of their performance to prepare for the division stretch ahead. Hear it from the players and coaches:
On locker room morale
HC Jeff Hafley: It's just (what we have been saying since) day one. It's who we are. It's what we have to be. We got really good guys. I don't even think that's going to be an issue.
ILB Jordyn Brooks: I think you just keep going. There's nothing you can do about what's already happened. We've lost five in a row, so I think this bye week will be good for us if we treat it the right way. Use that time to self-reflect. You know what I mean? Everybody look at what you can do better individually and use that time to rest and recover and kind of reset like you said and try to come back to the next half of the season and put on a better result.
EDGE Chop Robinson: Don't nobody want to be 0-5, but I'm here, I'm fighting for these guys, and we keep playing hard for these guys and these coaches and we're going to get it right. I believe we're going to turn it around, so we just got to tune into the details and get better every week.
On team identity
Jeff Hafley: Well, I think we're building. You're probably tired of hearing it, but I think we're a team that plays really hard and gives great effort. I think we're a tough, physical team. If you look at identity, those are who we are. Now we need to take the next step and we need to be more efficient and we need to execute at a higher level. And again, that's not me talking about players only. That's coaching, too.
ILB Jordyn Brooks: No, I feel like if you don't win, like you don't really have an identity yet. You know what I mean? So I think that one thing we can hang our hat on is that we play tough. I don't think anybody is out there just not giving 100% effort. One thing that I know for sure is from this group that we're going to fight to the end. But right now, we're trying to find out who we are, how we're going to win these games, how we're going to pull through at the end of the game when we needed it. Like I said, this bye week will be good for us.
DL Zach Sieler: We got their [the offense] back and they got ours. We let up touchdowns, they go back and they go score a touchdown, and we got to stop them. It's a team game, all three phases, offense, defense, and special teams, and we all got to play better. Once part of its slacking, everyone's got to pick them up and just vice versa.
On confidence and consistency
HC Jeff Hafley: I want to see more consistency. I want to see better execution. I want to see the same fight. I want to see the same energy. I want to see the same connection. We need to execute better. And that's all of us. That's not me just talking about the players. That's everybody.
ILB Jacob Rodriguez: Simply playing better football, like being more confident in each other and the guys around you. I feel like we have a good plan every week. There's never been a time where I'm going in doubting that we're going to win the game. We're going in to win the game and we're going to try to the best of our ability to do that, but then we go in and as players, we're not playing the call as well as we can. We're not winning our one-on-one; we're not winning our one-eleventh that we have to do every single play. But I think that just comes with confidence in practice, stressing yourself out as much as you can to see where your range is, to see kind of where you can mess up, where you can take shots and where you can't. I think that's an important part about practice, but I think we're growing. I think we're learning. We just got to kind of turn the corner here. I think it's been frustrating talking about like, we're so close, we're right there. We can play with anybody, but I mean, we just got to turn it into wins. We can't keep talking about it, we got to start making stuff happen.
On self-scouting and resetting
HC Jeff Hafley: I think it will be a good time for us to look hard and evaluate the players, evaluate the scheme, evaluate how we're coaching, evaluate what certain guys can do, and take a hard look and then come back and go back to work. It's going to be who we are. We're going to roll up our sleeves and this group's going to work. And I know that they're going to. This is not going to be a group that starts going backward and pointing fingers. It's not who they are. They're going to work and they're going to get better and they're going to compete, and we need to do the same thing as coaches.
DL Kenneth Grant: Yes, I think every bye week we try to look at ourselves in the mirror and see what we can do better and what things we do good and what things we're bad at. So it's a really good bye week to regroup and get back with the boys.
G/T Kadyn Proctor: I mean, it's just a big eye-opener. You got to focus on the things that you're doing wrong. Still a long season ahead of us. Fix those little things but also get our body back right and try to get back fresh. Just like I said, it's a long season. You got to feel up to it every game, so whatever you need to do to prepare every week.
CB Chris Johnson: Really just echoing through the building, just take care of your body. Having this bye is valuable, whenever it lands, just to be able to get your body back and try to get back to preseason shape, back when everybody's 100%.
WR Malik Washington: I think it's kind of a collection of what we've been saying the last few weeks, like we're getting better. I think we're seeing improvement through the games, but there's still some mistakes that we're making that we're shooting ourselves in the foot. No matter who it is, everybody's got to take a moment to just reflect on their game, what they're doing and how they could do their one-eleventh to help this team, which I think we'll do over the bye week.
On bye-week plans
WR Malik Washington: Rest and recover. Probably go bowling.
ILB Jacob Rodriguez: I don't know, I'll see how this first one goes. I tried to talk to a lot of guys, but I'll probably just see family and just try to reset to get going for the rest of the year. But I'll just try to tighten up everything I can, get the body back.
C Aaron Brewer: Just stay proactive. Don't let the bye week think like that it's a literal bye week of just sitting around not doing nothing. Stay moving, stay in your playbook. It's a time to get ahead on the next week. Yeah, get away from it a little bit, relax, but also keep moving, stay in your playbook, and stay prepared for next week.
CB Chris Johnson: Yeah, really just staying here, kind of just taking this week, like you said, to self-evaluate, kind of work on things. We have a lot more time, work on things that we're not personally good at. So I'm going to be in here in the building, whether it's getting a lift in or working on different kind of techniques that I feel like I've been lacking over the last few weeks just to come back and be prepared.
