Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
The returning Dolphin
Dave Hyde talks to Ryan Tannehill.
“It was a hard time for me, not being around the guys, not being in practice.” Ryan Tannehill
DAVIE – How’d he look? He looked fine. He looked accurate. Ryan Tannehill looked just as you’d expect on a meaningless May practice that, let’s face it, you can’t attach any bottom-line significance to at all. How’d he feel? That’s another matter. Here’s the word Tannehill chose to describe being out there again: “Amazing.”
Here’s the phrase he greeted reporters with: “Back from the dead.”
Here’s the story he told teammates Wednesday about looking out the storm windows of the cafeteria by the Dolphins practice field: “I remember looking out this glass like a kid at a store unable to get out there and practice.”
This is the story we don’t tell enough in sports, the joy of the returning player, and it’s only underlined by the smile of the Dolphins quarterback that resonated through the full franchise after a mid-May practice.
Then again, how long had it been? Nearly nine months since he could practice? Twenty games since he last played in a game? All because of a knee injury he had surgically repaired as the season started last September.
“It felt amazing to be back out here,” Tannehill said. “It’s been a long road to be back on the field. A lot of hard work, a lot of time and effort put in by myself and the guys in the training room.”
This was a different Tannehill, then. More emotional. More thankful. It’s unfair to say he’ll be more motivated, because that undercuts the fact no one considered him unmotivated in the past.
But maybe as with anyone who’s seen something important taken away, from Dan Marino to Ebenezer Scrooge, there’s an energizing perspective to what’s returned to him now.
“It was a long year,” he said. “In dark times, I tried to stay positive and take it in stride as much as I could, and do my best in rehab and grow and stronger every day. But it was hard.
“It was a hard time for me, not being around the guys, not being in practice. I was around in meetings. But it’s not the same. You can’t replicate that time of grinding it out on the practice field together and going through the ups and downs of playing games.”
“That was the hardest part for me. Initially when you get hurt, you kind of think the games will be what I miss the most. And, yeah, I really missed the games. … But what I missed the most, day in and day out, was the grind of the preparation of competing with the guys, pushing them, trying to make them the best they can be, just driving the offense.”
There will be a lot of handwringing and knee-watching in the coming months because of Tannehill’s health and the concern with the backup quarterback. But let’s face it: Players return from surgically repaired knees with no issue all the time.
For quarterbacks, the concerns should be less. Tom Brady. Carson Palmer. Sam Bradford. You can draw up a list and a rebuilt knee doesn’t affect quarterbacks whose mobility isn’t integral to their game.
Tannehill is mobile. But it’s not the primary part of his game. He looked fine Wednesday, for what that mattered. He threw well. He moved in the pocket without problems. He got bumped once by a lineman, and adjusted to make a completion.
But again, the practice wasn’t the story. No May practice can be. The story was the smile he kept showing that told of the fun he was having.
He said: “At this point, it’s, ‘Let it rip.’ The knee has been tested to the ninth degree. When I’m out on the field it’s just playing football.”
He said: “I definitely grew last year, I learned a lot of football. Now it’s a matter of putting it into practice.”
He said in a way everyone in the franchise was nodding along to after this day: “I’m so blessed to go out and compete and play and do what I love.”