Someone surreptitiously filmed the Miami Dolphins Wednesday walkthrough before their Thursday Night Football game against the Cincinnati Bengals. While that person doesn’t appear to have anything to do with either team, they still leaked those clips onto Twitter, where they were disseminated by fans looking for flaws in the Miami offense. It was the kind of thing that can provide an unfair edge — and one teams have lost draft picks over in the past.
But Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel knew not all was right when he held his last practice at the University of Cincinnati. He saw people watching. So he engaged in a little subterfuge of his own to counter it.
McDaniel’s final walkthrough was loaded with illegal plays.
The #Dolphins noticed people watching their walkthrough Wednesday in Cincinnati, so they made a sly adjustment: All the clips circulating on Twitter have 12 players on offense.
Fake plays? Fake routes on real plays? Either way, Mike McDaniel and company staying one step ahead. pic.twitter.com/wTGKY0Eswh
— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) September 29, 2022
Miami ran its offense at Nippert Stadium with 12 men on the field for the bulk of its practice. And while I’m not going to link to the wildly shady video clips here, you can see something clearly isn’t right with the Miami formation in each shot.
Yep, that’s too many guys.
Nope, not legal.
Under center this time, still illegal.
So yeah, I’m not sure how much the Bengals would get out of this even if they snuck a peek on Twitter. The Dolphins figured someone was watching and ran a bunch of decoy plays that might leave whomever was spying more confused than when they started. That’s a “chess, not checkers” counterpunch from McDaniel.
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