Dolphins @ Atlanta on Friday Fez
I saw you post in another thread about your support for Miami + @ Atlanta on Friday Night in the preseason's opening weekend. Just making sure you'd seen this....
By Jeff Darlington
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When the Dolphins take the field for their first preseason game against the Falcons on Friday, don’t expect to see a squad trying desperately to defeat the opposition.
Coach Tony Sparano said his team will not spend the next several practice preparing for the Falcons. It won’t build a comprehensive game plan specific to Atlanta, instead focusing on its goals at this point in camp.
“We are not going to use this as a game week,” Sparano said. “We really aren’t going to prepare at all for Atlanta, just go down there and kind of decide what we want to run and get a look at some things.
“It is going to be hard to use these early preseason games as anything other than practice opportunities to see players and to get them some work.”
Had this been last year, the Dolphins would have already conducted 12 or 13 practices. But right now, they have had only eight — and only a few of those have included their free agent signings because they had to wait for the collective bargaining agreement to be ratified.
Instead, expect the Dolphins to keep practicing as usual this week, using perhaps the last two preseason games as more glorified dress rehearsals that will include preparations for the opponent.
Learning curve
The rapid installation of the team’s new playbook continues to make progress. The scrimmage provided a good indication — given the necessary interaction between coaches on the sideline and players on the field — to gauge their development.
“I think they are handling it really well,” Sparano said. “We probably had two times where we didn’t get lined up properly out there [Sunday], and that’s really positive.
“We took 68 scrimmage snaps out there in really less than an hour. So we got in and out of the huddle from the sideline, personnel being sent in by the guys that are going to do it in the game. The coaches did a good job of handling that, as well.”
