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Dolphins News: Quarterback Camp - Day 1
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Dolphins News: Quarterback Camp - Day 1
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*** DOLPHINS NEWS ***
Apr 29, 1998: -- Quarterback Camp - Day 1 --

The Dolphins had their first day of quarterback camp yesterday and most of the news coming out of camp was about how much better the new offensive system works and how much easier it is to learn. All the players interviewed praised the system, saying that the change in terminology had made their lives much easier.

The old terminology was based on a code system, where the blocking assignments, pass patterns and running plays were coded. The only way to learn the code was to memorize it and remember what each code meant. When the number of codes ran into the hundreds for each player, it was difficult to remember all of them accurately.

The new system, however, tells the player exactly what he's supposed to do within the name of the play itself. To take a simple example, if a run is called to the left, it will have the word "left" in it. The old system required that each player memorize all the numbers and the plays they referred to. Unfortunately, the numbers had no relation to the type of play being called or the schemes they were supposed to run.

Players such as Ray Nealy, Yatil Green, O.J. McDuffie, Lamar Thomas, Troy Drayton, and most importantly, Dan Marino, all had praise for the new system. All agreed that it will make it easier to execute well and avoid mistakes during the game.

Quarterback camp will last for 3 days, from Tuesday until Thursday this week and will include only the veterans. The draftees get to go back to school.

Yesterday, Richmond Webb returned to practice for the first time following knee surgery at the end of last season. He had sat out all of this weekends' drills with the rookies but was back on the field yesterday.

Yatil Green continues to practice and make progress towards a full recovery. He had a couple of nice catches yesterday, including one that he snagged over the head of a defensive back that went for a touchdown. Perhaps more importantly, however, he had his first real collision with a defensive player when he got tangled up with Jerry Wilson and the two went down in a pile. Following the collision, he returned to practice and showed no ill effects.

Lawrence Phillips and Troy Drayton missed both practices again as Phillips continues to nurse a hamstring pull and Drayton recovers from knee surgery.

Larry Izzo is participating in camp, but is not fully recovered from his Achilles injury last summer. However, linebacker Ronnie Ward does appear to have fully recovered from his broken leg and Stanley Pritchett is also back to full speed and power after sitting out most of last season.

My Comments:

The news on the new offense is encouraging, but the real test won't come until the fall when the Dolphins open the regular season. Then we'll have the answer that we've all be waiting for for a long time. Namely, was Gary Stevens as bad as we think he was?

Yatil Green hasn't been progressing as fast as the coaches would like, but he has been making progress and the big news from yesterday is not that he caught the ball nor that made a streaking play for a touchdown, but that he hit Jerry Wilson and went down hard. Yatil needs to get past that psychological barrier and getting hit without getting injured is step one.

I hope that Larry Izzo fully recovers. There are almost 3 more months left until the start of training camp and that's a lot of time for him, but the Achilles injury he had is a tough one to recover from and he'll need every minute.

Today's trivia quiz - who led all Dolphins rushers in yards-per-carry average in 1996? Hint: it wasn't a running back.

And now for something completely different....

While I was at the draft, the NFL passed out sheets title "Draft Notes" each day I was there. These are just tidbits of information - trivia, one might say - about the draft. The notes contain mostly useless pieces of information, such as the fact that this was the third time in the history of the draft that 3 players from the state of Florida were selected in the top 10.

Anyway, my favorite piece of trivia in the first day's Draft Notes was this, quoted verbatim from the handout:

"Twenty-nine of the 31 NFL teams were represented by merchandise worn by fans attending today's draft. The only teams not represented were Buffalo and Carolina."

Don't ask me why the NFL thinks that it has 31 teams in the league. I guess the 31st team must be the Cleveland Browns, although I don't remember any fans in Cleveland Browns merchandise.

And I guess no Bills' fans showed up - that wanted to be recognized.

Related Info:


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Curt Fennell, curt@phins.com, DOLFAN in New Rochelle (almost)
     
   

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