Dolphins Underrated Rookie Is An UNSTOPPABLE Force

All right, let’s talk Miami Dolphins. We’re obviously in the thick of training camp, starting to see what this team is going to look like for the 2025 season. There’s been a lot of unfortunate news when it comes to the injury bug when it comes to one part of this team, the back end of the defense in particular. But it’s not all bad. There’s some new additions, some young guys stepping up and doing some very impressive things as well. And there’s one rookie that’s really showcasing his talents, becoming a key player for Miami already at this point in his career. We’ll get to that story, plus some interesting data as always. But first, I’m Nick. That is Andrew. And this is Saturday morning inspection. All right, the Miami Dolphins. When it comes to training camp, there’s been, of course, disappointing news when it comes to the secondary, the injury bug. Look, it happens. Dolphins fans, you know that better than anybody. It’s disappointing. But again, it’s not all bad. Tua looks good. Most important position on the field. That’s obviously very important. But there’s another guy, and I hate to say he’s underrated, but because he was the Dolphins first round selection, but Kenneth Grant has quietly been dominating for the Miami Dolphins. We’ve been waiting to see until the pads came on because obviously first part of training camp, a lot of helmets only, a lot less contact, a lot less in the trenches focus, but now we’re in full pads. We’re in live contact. We’re starting to see how good Grant can really be for Miami. And he looks exactly as advertised. This guy is already showing up the way the Dolphins envisioned him when they select him in the first round. Let’s pull up three tweets here courtesy of Travis Wingfield, a really good Dolphins reporter. Great social media follow on X or Twitter, whatever you call it these days. Highly recommend you check his stuff out for dolphin stuff. Uh his post here, we’re going in chronological order. Uh Kenneth Grant is taking dudes for rides and one-on- ons. I saw him take Jonah, who might be the hardest dude on the team to move, and walked him back several yards. Uh the following day, Wingfield posted, “Should be no surprise that KG’s production had a noticeable uptick when the pads came on. his ability to put that weight on guys and then unccort his athleticism as a redirect is why he was such a rare prospect in terms of upside. And then finally there Kenneth Grant rides the wave on an outside achain run and stacks it up comfortably the best practice for Gh for KG for my money so far. And that was the last Dolphins practice. They had the 31st off with no practices. So what we’re seeing pads coming on physicality ramping up Kenneth Grant wrapping up showcasing exactly why he was selected by the Miami Dolphins. talking about a trend setter, an attitude shifter, a physical presence inside to just change the entire trajectory of this Dolphins defense and frankly this entire team. We talked about earlier this offseason during many camps during OTAAS. How he had to be almost dialed back by the coaches just because they were in helmets and he was going full boore, full explosive, full power, full contact. They said, “Listen, man. Love the enthusiasm, love the energy, maybe dial it back a little bit.” Well, guess what? They’re starting to unleash him and he’s become an unstoppable force for the Dolphins defense. This is obviously a great sign because it’s exactly what they wanted when they selected this rookie out of Michigan. But when you take a step back and look at the Dolphins statistically and certainly last season, there’s a few things that jump out. So, let’s give a highle view real quick with our first graphic. And this is sort of an eye chart here, but you can see what this basically shows. It shows on the X a X-axis the defensive snaps you played and the Y-axis is the defensive EPA you gave up per play. So, this is just defensive success, how good you were as a defense, right? And you can see upper left corner, Philadelphia Eagles, best defense in football. Makes sense. Bottom righthand corner, Carolina Panthers, worst defense in football. Makes sense, right? And you can see the Miami Dolphins right there. Again, not far behind Philly in the upper left. One of the better defensive teams from a highle perspective. That’s good, right? And I think a lot of people may even be a little surprised by that. But where it gets very interesting for Miami, and let’s go ahead and flip to our second chart here, is that on first and 10, they’re significantly worse. right there. They were a good defense statistically analytically last year, but when it comes to first and 10, and you can see the Miami Dolphins dropped down dramatically. They still faced a relatively low amount of snaps, but their EPA dropped significantly. Instead of being basically second to Philly, they’re now below average in terms of EPA per play, in terms of defense. Again, on first and 10, that’s the important takeaway. On first and 10, they were below average. They were able to survive and cover it up on later downs, but that’s a hard way to live, especially against good teams, especially in playoff games, right? You get a good team, a playoff team, they get good yardage on first and 10, it’s a lot harder to stop them. We saw that as one of the many reasons why the Dolphins have struggled to win those big games over the past few years against good teams. You’ve got to be good on first and 10. You got to be good on every down, but you certainly can’t relent a lot of yardage on first and 10. And you can see the Dolphins last year defensive success between overall and first down dramatic shift downward. Again, this was a situation when the Dolphins need to improve. Now, Kenneth Grant run stuffer setting the line of scrimmage. Exactly what you’re looking for. You’re looking for a guy that can take a first and 10 for an offense to a second and nine. And guess what? That’s what Kenneth Grant is. Eating up space, resetting the line of scrimmage, getting penetration, stretching outside runs, and then stacking it up. As the final report indicated, this is a guy who is just awesome at getting opposing offenses into second and 10, second and eight, second and nine. That was the Dolphins biggest defensive weakness from an analytical perspective last season. And Kenneth Graham is perfectly suited to help just with that. But he’s not only doing that, and I think that’s what’s really important. Let’s go to our final graphic here to highlight another important point here is that the Anthony Weaver, the defensive coordinator for the Miami Dolphins, he loves brushing the passer with only three to four rushers. And again, another eye chart here. You can see most of the other teams are grayed out. I just want to emphasize Miami on the right there. They had three to four pass rushers, the third most of all 32 NFL teams. They love only rushing three to four guys. What does that mean? It means you got to have guys inside that can from a defensive tackle position that can push the pocket. You if you’re only going to rush three or four guys, you can’t have defensive lineman that can’t rush the passer. Grant great on first down in terms of stopping the run, but he’s also an underrated pocket pusher. You talk about our earlier report about how he was pushing Jonah back in one-on- ones. That’s exactly what we’re talking about in passing situations with a first down or otherwise. If you’re only rushing three to four guys, you need that defensive interior to push the pocket, push the center, push the guard back into the quarterback’s laps. That way, star edge rushers like Chop Robinson looking like he’s going to be can get the play, can get the quarterback, get him on the ground, force a hurry, whatever it may be. That’s exactly what Kenneth Grant is showing in training camp as well. So no matter what you look for in terms of stopping the run, in terms of pushing the pocket, winning on first down, helping out your pass rushers, every little thing the Dolphins could have wanted from Kenneth Grant, attitude shifter, mentality, he is delivering in spades. I know it’s weird to say, like I said a few minutes ago, that he’s an underrated rookie because he was a first round pick, but what he’s doing so far, he is sliding under the radar. And this looks like a phenomenal pickup for Miami. Definitely a guy to watch, not just over the course of the preseason, not just over the course of the regular season to see, hey, can he become a good player? The question is, is he an attitude shifter, a game changer, a team changer in Miami? And so far, he seems to be trending in that direction. All right, M. I’m curious what your thoughts are on all this, but first, Dolphins fans in the comment section below. We’re talking underrated rookies. We’re talking even though Grant’s a first round pick, I think he’s underrated because he’s been doing great things. But in your opinion, if you look across the NFL right now, push aside the Dolphins, who is the most underrated rookie right now? A guy you think will have a big impact? Maybe it’s on a rival in the AFC East or just another guy that you say, “Hey, listen. People need to follow this kid even though he’s not a Miami Dolphin.” Give us your pick for most underrated rookie in football. Put them in the comment section below. And while you’re down there, make sure you go to the description box below and check out the link to our weekly newsletter courtesy of the Substack platform. 100% free, doesn’t cost you a thing, just provides extra content for you guys. We even highlight the comments of the week. So if you have a great comment, you may find yourself in the newsletter. Again, make sure you check it out and sign up. Link is in the description box below. But M, enough from me. Over to you. What are your thoughts on this latest out of Miami? Yeah, Nick, I think Miami has got a good thing going here. And you look at what everything is going on around the front of the defensive line. I think there’s a trend here as far as getting some really talented younger players along this front for while I think Chub is really great player. Sealer is good great player. Those are guys Seer he will be 30 by the time the the season starts. Bradley Chub is almost 30 as well 29 some and some change there. But you look across the front they’re starting to transform this thing. You’ve got Chop Robinson obviously he’s extremely young 22 years old. Jaylen Phillips also another guy along defensive front 26 years old so relatively young for him as well. Then add in a guy like Kenneth Grant you really are getting a young base here on the defensive side of things. So I I like that when you look at the front four but there’s something else that jumps out at me here when you look at Kenneth Grant and this is a guy that talk you talk about you know someone they need as far as playoff pushes. someone that can come in, you know, as the later through the season things get a little bit, you know, tougher. And that is what Kenneth Grant is. That’s kind of player he is. And if you look at his PFF data, starting from week one, uh, of the season last year for Michigan, this is a guy who started out a little bit slow, but as the season went on, actually was a little bit different than you may expect because, you know, the season gets long, you get tired, things get harder, you think maybe the play dips a little bit. Actually, he got better as the season on went on every single game, you know, culminating to the big win against Ohio State where he had one of his best games. Probably one of the larger reasons as why this Michigan team was able to put up such a big win against the Ohio State Buckeyes. Absolutely phenomenal game by him. 89.9 overall defensive grade there. So, you love to see a guy that you see some traits in him. a guy that can be a deeper, you know, big- time game, playoff type of player. As the season goes on, he just gets better and better the more snaps he puts under his belt in a season. You love that kind of stuff. That’s what we saw out of Kenneth Grant. And that’s all fine and good because the next thing that I like is you see guys do really well in college. We hear all of their athletic abilities. They test well. The next step in the process that we love to see is what are they doing at camp? People might say, “Oh, it’s just training camp.” Well, no. This is their first time going up against NFL level guys. Maybe their own teammates, but what do they look like going up against NFL talent kind of guys? Seems like Kenneth Grant is absolutely holding his own, showing he was worthy of that first round pick for the Dolphins. So, you got to love to hear that. Where there may be some negative news around some points of the ball for this defense, Kenneth Grant looks like a stud. He looks like a really strong player for the Dolphins. And like you showed here, the data just supports this is a guy that fits in for the Dolphins defense where they needed help and as well as what they like to do under Anthony Weather rushing less guys. So Kenneth Grant seems like a great pickup. Really good sign for the Dolphins early on. And you hit on a really good point about in terms of a shift in this Dolphins team that’s getting younger. We’re seeing it across the football, right? It wasn’t long ago that guys like Tyreek Hill and Raheem Mostard and Taran Armstead were sort of the core of the Dolphins offense. They’ve obviously all moved on. Some retired like Armstead of course. Tyreek Kills with the Kansas City Chiefs. Most I believe is with is with the Raiders. And we’ve seen younger guys step up. We’ve seen newer guys step up as the Dolphins transition into a younger team. And it’s sort of a tough challenge because they went hyper allin as they should have when Tua was cheap. But now that Tua has more dollars and you got to figure out how to, you know, make that salary cap magic work. Now’s the opportunity for you to use these young guys and you got to get it done. It ain’t easy to do. But if you look at the Dolphins team now, they’re doing a great job in terms of getting younger, especially on defense. You might up you brought up Kenneth Grant, Jordan Phillips who we’ve covered doing great things. Chop Robinson’s a future superstar. You look at the secondary as much as they’ve been just just just completely worn down with injuries, just ravaged by injuries. They’ve got some young guys that I think in step over the coming, I’m going to be honest, this season and beyond to kind of fill a gap left by Jaylen Ramsey and other people and eventually replace Ma Fitzpatrick. We are in the middle of a youth transition. You brought up a guy like Seer again, other side of 30, Chubbs getting up there. This is a transition time for the Miami Dolphins. They’re getting younger and younger at the most important positions. We’re seeing guys like Kenneth Grant emerge not just as playmakers and as leaders. And honestly, if you’re a Dolphins fan, I think this is what you’re looking for, right? Because obviously they were won a little healthy amount of games over the past few seasons, right? But not the late season victories, not the postseason success. Now’s the opportunity while you’ve got a good culture, good quarterback, some good stars on offense like Jaylen Wadd for example. Absolutely phenomenal. I think now’s the opportunity to kind of reset the culture with a youth movement and just a a shot in the arm to get this team heading in a better direction. and you can catapult off that movement and get some postseason success because one of the things that can happen is if you get in the rut, if you become the team that can’t win the big one and you just recycle with basically the same players every year, you basically continue to be the same team. You never change. A guy that comes from a championship program like Kenneth Grant used to postseason success, used to winning big games. He can give that shot in the arm, that revival in a franchise that can help get them over the top and finally bring postseason success, playoff victories to the Miami Dolphins. Now, no guarantees, of course. We’re not saying Kenneth Grant’s going to come in and suddenly this Dolphins team is going to the Super Bowl, but he’s part of another he’s another piece of the puzzle to allow that to happen and part of an overall youth movement for this Miami Dolphins football team. And most importantly, guys, he’s just a really good football player. And that’s frankly what it comes down to more than anything. You get a lot of really good football players. You draft really good football players. You tend to win a lot of games. Grant showing himself to be a good football player and he should help the Dolphins do a lot more winning, not just this season, but for many years to come.

The Miami Dolphins have a rookie that is starting to absolutely dominate. This young Dolphins defender as already exceeded high expectations. The result is a massive boost for this Dolphins team. Fans of the Miami Dolphins should be excited by this news.

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