Dolphins Add Another Special Teams Specialist

The Miami Dolphins have struggled on special teams in recent years, but clearly are making a concerted effort to improve in that area

The Miami Dolphins clearly were serious about upgrading their problematic special teams.

For the second time this offseason, they have signed a player whose previous NFL experience predominantly is centered around that part of the game.

The latest such addition is former New York Giants linebacker Cam Brown, who the team signed Wednesday.

Brown spent his first four NFL seasons with the New York Giants after being a sixth-round pick out of Penn State in the 2020 draft.

Brown played 60 of a possible 66 games in those four seasons, but after playing 93 snaps on defense as a rookie, he played 14 combined snaps there the past three years.

In his four seasons with the Giants, Brown played 1,328 special teams snaps, averaging more than 80 percent of the Giants' special teams snaps.

Here's a scouting report on Brown from Giants Country Publisher Patricia Traina: "Cam Brown at one point was a solid core special teams player for the New York Giants who was widely lauded by the coaches for his unusual combination of length, size, and speed. As a rookie he played some gunner, but it turned out that he was more valuable roaming the middle of the field. Once a special teams captain for the Giants, Brown entered the league as an outside linebacker, but attempted to transition to inside linebacker in his rookie season. The experiment failed as Brown lacks defensive instincts and struggled with the mental part of the game.

"Brown’s special teams career has been inconsistent. He never really posted any game-defining plays while on special teams, and at times he could be just as much as a force as he could be invisible. He does give good effort and again, it’s hard to ignore his size, speed, and length, but the lack of consistency is probably a big reason the Giants opted to move on from him."

THE DOLPHINS' EFFORTS TO IMPROVE THE SPECIAL TEAMS

Earlier this offseason, the Dolphins signed Buffalo Bills cornerback Siran Neal as a free agent, another addition designed to help the special teams.

In the annual special teams rankings put together by veteran sportswriter Rick Gosselin analyzing 22 statistical categories, the Dolphins came in 31st last season.

The Dolphins made a change on their coaching staff in the offseason when they hired Ronnie Bradford to replace Branden Farrell as assistant special teams coach, but head coach Mike McDaniel said the issue wasn't coaching.

 "I think so many of the decisions that I have to make are very layered and although results are very, very important — and I think coach Crossman would agree with the statement that the results aren't where we want them to be — so much of my job is determining the compounding variables and the whys of things," McDaniel said at the 2024 combine. "And ultimately, I think that the bottom line is picturing us moving forward and how to get that phase of the football team to find the improvement necessary for us to take steps in our game as a team, I determined that he was the appropriate guy to lead us to fix the things that haven't been up to the standard.

"I don't think it's appropriate for you to just point blank, say, 'OK, the results aren't there. You shouldn't be either.' You have to assess the whys and come up with a game plan of how we're going to improve that phase, which is very important to us moving forward. And which is why Danny is part of it."

And now, with the signing of Brown, Crossman has additional help to try to help revive the Dolphins special teams.