The Miami Dolphins received their first run-in with the COVID-19 virus this summer when the news broke that co-offensive coordinator George Godsey had tested positive, shelving him for a week of practices and pushing his co-coordinator Eric Studesville into a singular role at practice. But the Dolphins are nearly back to status quo; signaled by Godsey’s return to the team facility on Monday for assistant coach interviews with the press.
Godsey, who is part of a collaborative effort to construct the Dolphins’ playbook, is part of a mystery combination of responsibilities for Miami. And even with the first preseason game on the horizon this Saturday against Chicago, the Dolphins remain unrelenting in keeping the details of their arrangement close to the vest.
We still don’t know which coach specifically will be responsible for calling the plays or whether or not the coaches will be upstairs, downstairs or a combination of the two on game day. One thing Godsey did dish on was the continued growth of Miami’s second-year quarterback Tua Tagovailoa and what the team is expecting moving forward.
“(Tua is) continuing to improve. His leadership is improving. His communication is improving. Not just on the field but off the field. He knows that every day is a chance to get better and he’s done that. There’s certain parts of his game that we want to continue to improve. He knows that we’ve never reached our ceiling. That’s kind of the way we look at it. So we’ll go travel to Chicago, we’ll see some different stuff, we’ll have to make some corrections I’m sure and then we’ll go from there,” said Godsey on Monday.
The messaging falls in line with what Tagovailoa himself shared the other day with Judy Battista of NFL.com in that there’s constant improvement to search for and to not forsake the opportunity of the day to try to look at the big picture. But Godsey and the staff is willing to credit Tagovailoa for taking ownership of the offense and making sure he’s assertive with how things are run.
“I think when we speak as coaches, we give the 30,000-foot view on how we feel like the play should be run and how we want it executed. But ultimately that player that is running that particular route may run it a little bit different than another player. So (Tua) has taken that to go ahead and talk to those individual players and how they run it. Right now it may be DeVante (Parker) or somebody that may have not repped that play; but he’s capable of running the play so there’s got to be communication that can continue to grow to make that play work. That’s what happens – the players make the plays work, so they have to go ahead and take ownership and take it as their own and grow from there.”
Godsey has worked closely with Tagovailoa going back to the midway point of last season. So his return to the coaching staff will be a welcomed one for the Dolphins’ young quarterback; as well as the team’s desire to play up the mystery and intrigue of who is ultimately calling the plays on game day.