Why Dolphins Coach Never Wavered on TE Julian Hill

The cards were stacked against tight end Julian Hill as an undrafted free agent, but he earned an early believer on the Miami Dolphins coaching staff.

Assistant head coach and tight ends coach Jon Embree, who arrived with head coach Mike McDaniel in 2022, has stayed confident in Hill’s potential since he joined the team in 2023, even as he worked through the growing pains of his early NFL career.

“I know it wasn't very popular to be sold on him as I have,” Embree said Thursday. “A few things, one, his mindset and mentality. It's very important to him. He takes a lot of pride in his work.

“And I know sometimes it can be perceived as coach speak, but really it's a process to being a tight end in the NFL. 95 percent of these kids coming out of college don't play NFL football at the tight end position.”

Now in his third season, Hill has caught 29 of 43 targets for 239 yards across 40 career games, including 11 catches for 91 yards this year. His numbers don’t jump off the page, but it’s important to keep in mind that Hill’s role extends far beyond catching the football.

Of his 292 snaps this season, 144 have come as a run blocker. He’s run routes on 105 passing plays, but also stayed in to block on 43 other pass attempts, per Pro Football Focus.

“He's very smart. He sees what defenses are trying to do,” Embree said. “He's able to make adjustments on the fly, like on [De’Von Achane’s] touchdown run [against the New Orleans Saints].

“Technically, that wasn't his guy, but he picked him up and then got another guy. So he's really starting to understand what we're trying to get accomplished with our runs, and that allows him to play a little bit freer. So I think once we clean up a couple of things with him, he'll be that guy that hopefully will be the standard of what you're looking for in a blocking tight end.”

While Hill is primarily an inline blocking tight end, he was lining up in a variety of positions early as an undrafted rookie. Of 360 snaps in 2023, 199 came inline, 120 were in the slot, 23 were out wide, and he also played 17 snaps out of the backfield as the Dolphins searched for creative ways to create rushing lanes.

“[Tight ends are] not asked to do a lot of things that we're asking them to do,” Embree said. “And so therefore, it's going to be a process. And I just knew working with him and seeing what was in his body and seeing how he thought and was able to communicate with him that it was just a matter of time. It was just a matter of how fast he could progress. I know it probably wasn't as fast as maybe what he wanted or other people wanted.”

It might have seemed as if Hill was thrown into the deep end as a rookie. He took his lumps early, including seven penalties in 2024, but Embree never doubted he could handle it.

“I have an expression I tell the guys, I will never let you drown,” Embree said. “Now, you may be going underwater and coming up, but I'll never let you go under and stay under. It's a slow process when I'm teaching guys on what they need to do.

“With [Hill], there were certain things I needed to get him to do before he could do the next step. And he knew what the next step was, and sometimes he wanted to do the next step and skip the step that we needed to work on. Once he figured it out, and part of it's probably trust. You've got to have that relationship where they trust you, and once all that kind of got going, I think we're starting to see the fruits.”

Nine games into his third NFL season, Hill has carved out a role in a Dolphins offense that has rushed for over 160 yards in each of the last two weeks since returning from an ankle injury. However, he did drop a pass (that was thrown behind him) in Miami’s 21-17 win over the Saints.

“I believe he's still scratching the surface because I think there are things he can do in the pass game,” Embree said. “He missed that one pass behind him. But in our room, you touch it, you catch it. And I throw a bunch of low balls to my guys every day. And so those are the hardest ones for big guys to catch — he'll make that next time.”

More Miami Dolphins Coverage: