Dolphins offensive lineman Bayron Matos, who was hospitalized for several days early in training camp after a frightening injury, has been given indication that he will be able to play again and intends to play again, his agent said this week.
Agent Perlesta Hollingsworth, told the Miami Herald on Tuesday that Matos is back to feeling like himself after an “above-the-shoulder-type injury” resulted in him being airlifted to Ryder Trauma Center after Miami’s first training camp practice on July 23.
Hollingsworth said it’s uncertain if Matos will play this season, and that doctors and the Dolphins need to figure that out in the days ahead.
“He’s doing better,” he said. “He feels better. He has normal function and feeling. He definitely wants to play.”
In the 24 hours after the injury, Hollingsworth said Matos had “some movement but not full movement in his right leg. It comes and goes.”
He subsequently regained full movement in his extremities and was released from the hospital after a week.
Matos was injured during an inadvertent collision with a teammate. “He ran into a defensive lineman when his head was lowered and took the brunt of the impact,” Hollingsworth said
.Matos, a 6-7, 334-pound offensive lineman, played in preseason as a rookie last year but has not played a snap in a regular-season game. “I want to be one of the best tackles to play in the NFL,” he said last year. The Dolphins thought so much of Matos when they signed him 16 months ago that they guaranteed him $247,500, an unusually high number for an undrafted rookie.
At least 10 other teams showed interest. Born in the Dominican Republic, Matos, 23, initially played baseball growing up (he could throw in the 90s as a pitcher) but moved to the United States to play college basketball for two years at New Mexico and for a year at University of South Florida. He walked on as a football player at USF and played a couple dozen snaps on defense before moving to the offensive line.
Matos moved to the United States from the Dominican Republic when he was 17, initially for “basketball, to learn English, learn the culture.” In three years playing Division I college basketball, he averaged 3.4 points and 3.3 rebounds and 14 minutes per game in 48 games and 19 starts.
But Matos’ “host family in Tennessee said… you will be a football player. You will never touch a basketball.” So he walked on at USF and appeared in two games as a defensive end before switching to the offensive line, where he never saw game action.
Because of the NFL’s international player pathway program, the Dolphins were permitted to keep Matos as a 91st player, one above the usual offseason and training camp roster limit.
This and that
Several Michigan-based writers were mortified by the Dolphins’ performance in Wednesday’s joint practice with the Lions.
The Athletic’s Nick Baumgardner: “Lions just out-everything’d the Dolphins for 2 hours out here. As lopsided a joint NFL practice as I’ve ever seen. Lions just out-everything’d the Dolphins for 2 hours out here. As lopsided a joint NFL practice as I’ve ever seen.”
A to Z Sports’ Lions beat writer Mike Payton: “Either the Dolphins are really bad, or the Lions are just a juggernaut. Not a great day for Miami.”
The Athletic’s Colton Pouncey: “That was the most lopsided joint practice I’ve ever seen. Lions dominated both sides.”
▪ Coach Mike McDaniel said Wednesday that receiver Tyreek Hill, who has been nursing an oblique injury, “was at our facility in our five-week time off probably the most out of any player.”
▪ McDaniel praised the progress of second-year receiver Tahj Washington, who had three catches for 53 yards on Sunday against Chicago after missing his rookie season with a torn ACL.
Washington “is very focused on being a reliable playmaker that is fully tooled in all phases and is good with or without the ball,” McDaniel said. “There’s nothing better than, to me, being on the field with a guy that makes a play on the heels of an extended rehab, because all those days — everybody sees the result, they see the catch, but they don’t see the hours upon hours of work that goes into getting back on the field. I was pumped for him.”
▪ The Dolphins continue to think more of defensive tackle Benito Jones than Pro Football Focus does. PFF gave him low grades in 2023 in Detroit and 2024 in Miami but the Dolphins were eager to re-sign him.
“He’s a guy that is very galvanizing in the locker room, is known to be dependable, to be about the right stuff,” McDaniel said. “He drives big trucks and wears overalls and is a person unique to himself, and I think he’s doing a great job being himself and flourishing at that.”
▪ Sportico announced its annual NFL franchise valuations on Wednesday, and the Dolphins were ranked seventh highest, with the publication putting the team’s worst at $8.25 billion. (A source said owner Stephen Ross could get more than that if he sold.)
That puts the Dolphins behind only the Cowboys ($12.8 billion), Rams ($10.4 billion), Giants ($10.24 billion), Patriots ($8.76 billion), 49ers ($8.6 billion) and Eagles ($8.45 billion). The Jets are ninth at $8.11 billion and the Raiders 10th at $7.9 billion.
Here is a full report on Wednesday’s Dolphins-Lions practice in Michigan.
Here is an update on Chop Robinson’s injury.