Dolphins’ new reward for great plays? Let ’em eat cake
The moment, during an otherwise unremarkable team meeting, was rather surreal.
“Emmanuel Ogbah…
Come on down!’” safeties coach Joe Kasper shouted, as Ogbah recalled it.
Awaiting Ogbah after his walk to the front of the room: a three-tiered wedding cake, his reward for an interception during the previous Sunday’s 70-20 dismantling of Denver.
“It was amazing going down there, having your brothers cheering for you,” Ogbah said. “I knew I was going to get one. I didn’t know it was going to be like this!”
For Dolphins players, making a particularly effective block, or forcing a fumble, or snagging an interception doesn’t merely elicit the self satisfaction of a job well done. This year, it also sometimes earns a sweet treat.
Dolphins coaches this season have begun awarding cakes — one to three a week — for players who do something that gets the coaching staff’s attention from the previous week’s game, usually involving protecting or snatching the football.
“We were in the meeting a couple weeks ago,” rookie tight end Julian Hill
said. “And I hear, ‘Julian come down!’ What was cool was they had my face on the cake. The cake was humongous.”
Hill says he doesn’t even remember the play that earned him a cake, but Raheem Mostert — alert to everything going on around him — said it was for “his blocking abilities, protecting the ball, protecting the runner.”
Mostert received the first cake of the season, after an exemplary performance in the opener at the Chargers.
Allow Mostert to explain the cake protocol:
“When we have a ball meeting every Thursday, [coaches] talk about what we did to protect the ball and who stood out on tape protecting the ball on the offensive side. And on the defensive side, who got the ball out.”
Linebacker Jerome Baker said the Thursday “ball” meeting has value because “we go over who’s on that [week’s opposing] team that goes after the ball and is a target.”
Kasper typically announces who gets a cake, and the player walks to the front to retrieve it, like a game show contestant winning a prize. “It’s pretty funny,” Hill said.
But at Dolphins headquarters, all cakes are not created equal.
As Baker explains it, “if you get an interception as a defensive lineman, you get a wedding cake. If you score on defense, you get a wedding cake.”
Ogbah’s cake — which could be cut into well over 20 slices — has been the most impressive to date, Mostert said.
But safety Jevon Holland created a challenge for Kasper when he forced three fumbles in the Denver game
“Instead of Jevon getting three different cakes, they gave him a cookie cake,” Baker said. “And they’re all nice-sized.”
Running back Chris Brooks got his cake for a block that Brooks didn’t even consider particularly impressive.
So do players gobble up the cakes themselves? “Most of them share it,” Baker said. “You will see them in the lunch room.”
Ogbah brought his cake home and invited over all the front seven Dolphins defenders for dinner and dessert.
But not even a group of NFL defensive linemen and linebackers could finish the cake on their own; Ogbah planned to take what was left of it back to team headquarters to share with the team’s video crew, but the cake slipped out of his hands and tumbled onto his garage floor as he was leaving his home.
Hill isn’t sure what to do with his cake: “I got it in the freezer at home. Do I eat it and be fat? I’m trying to figure it out.”
Brooks, now on injured reserve, said his cake is “still in the refrigerator here, free for whoever wants it.”
CHATTER
Nik Needham, back after missing a full calendar year with a torn Achilles’ tendon, is returning as a safety and nickel corner, not a boundary corner, and said he’s versatile enough to pull that off. Former coach Brian Flores used him as a fill-in safety, but he has mostly been a cornerback.
He said the “last year to now was the hardest year of my life mentally and physically. Overcoming this injury is one of the hardest things in football for this position, too. Having to be in the boot three months straight, showering, having to sleep in a boot [was tough].”
Several Dolphins players aren’t happy that the team is being required to appear on HBO’s in-season Hard Knocks. Xavien Howard called it “bull [expletive].”
“Some guys were worried,” Ogbah said. “Sometimes you can blurt stuff out [that you] might not want on TV.”
Receiver Braxton Berrios said that NFL Films
Aand HBO have “done a great job letting us know we’re able to be comfortable, be ourselves. It’s going to be impossible not to notice them but we’re going to try to be as normal as possible. We’re not here for a TV show; we’re here to win games.”
Mike McDaniel said: “Anything that’s a competitive disadvantage that may come up, we’ll be able to keep that from hitting the final copy.” A date hasn’t been announced for the November debut.
Dolphins coaches have been impressed by the attitude of receiver Chase Claypool, who was traded by Chicago after he complained about how coaches were using him. He played four snaps against Philadelphia after being a healthy scratch against Carolina, but Claypool said he will not be asking about playing time.
“This is a team and offense where I’m not going to go from five snaps to 25,” he said. “It’s going to be a slow progression and I’ve got to earn my keep.
AI’m cool with that...
There’s definitely some [plays and packages] in there for me, but we were down a little bit [against the Eagles]. Some of the packages were specific to how we wanted the flow of the game to go.”
At 6-4, Claypool could emerge as a red zone threat. He had a great block on a Mostert run against the Eagles. “His level of knowledge of football and love of football.. he’s been great so far,” offensive coodinator
Frank Smith said.
Former Philadelphia 76ers coach and new ESPN/ABC analyst Doc Rivers said of the Heat: “Do I think they need another guy to get over the hump? I do. They have enough to make a run. But do they have enough to win it? I think they need another player, another closer, per se.
“Damian Lillard would have been a perfect fit because Dame is serious about basketball and his conditioning. He would have been an easy culture guy to add to the Heat. My guess is Pat Riley and
Erik [Spoelstra] are out looking [for] what’s another way they can improve their team. You have to give up something to get something. And that’s the problem right there for them.”
The Heat remains opposed to the idea of trading for James Harden; that view goes beyond management.
Rivers said that “every year, the Heat’s championship window has closed. Every single year, we say that. And then here they are, back. Their culture beats teams a lot.”
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