Inside Jeff Hafley's New-Look Miami Dolphins Practices

The Miami Dolphins are off and running for their first training camp practices under new head coach Jeff Hafley, and there are a few notable changes as compared to past regimes.

Specifically, the team is adopting the “three-on, one-off” strategy, and seems to be moving away from seven-on-seven work.

The Weekly Schedule

Hafley addressed both of these changes during a pre-practice press conference Thursday. Regarding the weekly schedule, he said, “We practice Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and we really don't ever go four practices in a row during the season. And I think it's just something that our body can get used to and get them in a routine.”

Mimicking regular season football and live reps seems to be the focus for this coaching staff, which is a notable difference from Mike McDaniel’s regime, which spent considerable time throughout camp practices on the timing and precision of one-on-ones and seven-on-sevens.

Seven-on-Seven

Hafley made his stance on those reps clear when speaking to the Miami media. “I don’t like seven-on-seven. I mean, in OTAs, we kind of have to do it because of the rules, and I respect that. But for so many positions, it's just, you want to play the game, right? You want to know the down and distance, you want to know the personnel, you don't want to just go out there and run plays.”

He noted the timing as a clear disconnect between pitch-and-catch reps vs. full team periods, utilizing a couple of defensive examples.

In a game setting, as dropping linebackers sense a quarterback is about to get hit, they can make an instinctual break towards the football or a specific route.

Or, as a press cornerback, “...I make a guy stop and start at the line of scrimmage; there's a clock in my head that I know… I just throw off the timing, he's not getting the ball."

Hafley went on to compare seven-on-sevens to “counting Mississippi's when we were a kid”, and added that, in his time under prolific offensive coaches Matt LaFleur and Kyle Shanahan, “they hated it."

It’s clear that the focus for the Dolphins is getting in as many reps as possible of a version of football that’s comparable to what’s seen on Sundays during the season, even if that means negative reps that wouldn’t be seen otherwise.

Hafley cited an example from Wednesday’s practice: “I mean, we had a great play on defense yesterday. It was third-and-10, and our defensive end lined up offsides. That doesn't happen in 7-on-7 … we have to get the rust off, and that's what training camp is all about."

Getting ready for the regular season is the primary goal of Jeff Hafley’s Miami Dolphins, and more so than years past, that means modeling the summer as close to the fall as possible.

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