Dark Side of the Moon

The Dolphins' 2025 plans have either come to naught or are half a page of scribbled lines. Plus: 49ers injuries and Coach Kingsbury's Holiday.

(Note: this was written just before news broke of Tyreek Hill’s undisclosed injury.)

Could someone please swing past Dolphins headquarters, knock on the door and make sure everyone is OK?

Mike McDaniel, the man tasked with inspiring the Dolphins to greatness by building a championship-caliber work environment, began his Monday press availability with the following exchange:

Forget running through walls for Coach. It’s time to draw the curtains, crawl back into the bed and wait for the sweet, sweet release of death’s gentle kiss.

Hanging on in quiet desperation is The Dolphins Way. Since the start of training camp …

• Tua Tagovailoa responded publicly to Tyreek Hill’s offseason diss track, sounding like a cross between the most condescending junior high guidance counselor since Mister Frond and an emotionally-wounded lover who will never forgive you for that time when your eyes lingered too long on that buxom barista with the unicorn tattoo on her ankle.

• Tyreek, meanwhile, told reporters that he was making an effort to always attend the team’s pre-practice stretching sessions, “because football is a team sport.” Two days later, he missed a team stretching session.

• Cornerbacks Kader Kohou and Artie Burns suffered season-ending injuries, just weeks after Jalen Ramsey finally gnawed his arm off and fled to the Steelers.

• Right tackle Austin Jackson, one of the few incumbents on a cobbled-together offensive line, suffered a lower leg injury that will sideline him for several weeks.

• Tight end Darrin Waller signed with the Dolphins as a potential replacement for Jonnu Smith (the Arthur Smith catnip in the Ramsey trade), then immediately went on IR with a hamstring injury.

All of this happened after I submitted the copy for my Dolphins installment of Why Your Team Sucks to Defector. (Here is the Bears installment.) I should probably write an addendum. Come to think of it, I just did.

No wonder McDaniel has completed his four-year transition from Instagram influencer to Bluesky doomer!

There’s much to unpack from the bullet points above. Let’s start with the fact that Waller spent the last four years making it clear to the Raiders, Giants and any observer paying even a little attention that he does not want to play football anymore. Waller has a lot going on in his personal life, and I empathize, but the NFL is no place for therapeutic self-discovery. And anyone who speaks openly about the dangers of codependency should not come within 50 miles of the Dolphins.

Meanwhile, ESPN’s Dan Graziano reported that the Dolphins brass liked the way Tua publicly chided Tyreek:

They saw it as a sign that the two were working to address the real underlying issues of the situation, rather than gloss over it with platitudes or social media sniping. Hill's news conference on Thursday, in which he not only said he agreed with Tua's comments but also offered the shockingly honest opinion that De'Von Achane isn't big enough to be the team's goal-line back, seemed to support the idea there are real and honest conversations happening in the building.

So the second-best example of Hill’s “honesty” was his criticism of a teammate? Also, this is supposed to be a football team, not a failing marriage: successful teams are talking about offensive timing and rhythm, not having “real and honest conversations.” Finally, Tyreek’s tardiness after stating the importance of teamwork provides a sense of how much honesty we are really talking about.

When the “missed stretch” story broke, longtime Dolphins reporter Omar Kelly defended Tyreek on TwiXter, noting that the All Pro receiver “rarely” showed up for stretches. Fair enough: Tyreek gets the star treatment. Or maybe it’s not the star treatment, and Tyreek just does whatever the hell he wants. But at least he’s trying to change. Or not. And Tua rewarded Tyreek’s effort to change, if there really was one, with a gold star and smiley-face sticker. Which Dolphins coaches privately applauded, because it meant that they didn’t have to do or say anything.

(For the record: I don’t know how the Dolphins run practices, but most teams stretch after several minutes of light loosening-up drills. The whole routine can take about 20 minutes, and usually includes every healthy player on the roster. Veterans don’t cavalierly skip stretches or treat them as some optional pre-practice activity. If Tyreek Hill “rarely” shows up, in means that he “rarely” bothers to be on time for work.)

It sure sounds like the Dolphins wait for Tyreek to do or say something, then figure out how to backtrack and claim that that’s actually how they want things to be. That’s called “enabling.” Then they send Tua out to say the things they don’t want to say, which is the weakest leadership strategy imaginable. Then McDaniel slouches forth and announces, “See you on the dark side of the moon.”

No one who is serious about winning a Super Bowl wants to play or work for the Dolphins. Ramsey, who is not always 100% with-the-program but isn’t a total goofball either, got his wish. So did Vic Fangio. DeShon Elliott called the Dolphins “soft as fuck” and could not wait to escape.

Safety Jordan Poyer, who spent one season with the Dolphins, gave Matt Lombardo a long interview last week where he said he would not play for any other team but the Bills, refuses to start over with a new team and took note of how hard it was for Bills opponents “up there in the wintertime.” Not to read too far between the lines, but it sure sounds like Poyer and Elliott share some common opinions about the Dolphins.

Buffalo or Beyond: Jordan Poyer Embraces Life's New Flow State | 4 Downs

If you spend a lot of time searching the web, you will notice that there are now two distinct NFL Internets. One is recognizable: ESPN, The Athletic, local outlets, FanSided, various USAToday-related “Wires,” some emergent sites like A-to-Z which can be a little clickbaity but never come completely unglued from reality.

Then there’s a Weird Web full of soap-opera versions of NFL events, written at least partially by AI, where stray quotes are ripped from contexts, scrambled with the opinions of television personalities or podcasters, and finally slathered with dream logic. There’s a semipermeable membrane between the two Internets, and characters like Tyreek and Waller (due to his high-profile divorce) can blur the journalistic lines between “there’s friction in the Dolphins locker room” and “Aliens Abducted Kacey Plum’s Baby.”

One consequence of the growing rift between conventional NFL journalism and Cloud Cuckooland engagement farming is cultural divergence. Real reporters now have an increased inclination to deny or downplay gossip-column stuff. Who can blame them? Not only must they deflate/dispel the usual rumors that bubble up from talk shows and Reddit, but now they find themselves reacting to Facebook posts claiming that some player donated his entire signing bonus to an LGBQT cause, or an anti-LGBQT cause, or half-and-half.

That may be what Graziano and Kelly were doing, at some level: protecting their sources from the nonsense-spewing bad-faith bananapants mirrorverse. A column like this one can sound something from that tealeaf-reading, dot-connecting, miasmic corner of the Internet: Rando smartass rips Dolphins based on press conference pull quotes.

But folks, Hill is mouthing “I’m a team player” platitudes while skipping stretches and criticizing teammates. Tagovailoa is talking about the need to rebuild relationships, while Hill continues to do the very things that strain relationships. The Dolphins traded away their best cornerback and their 2024 reception leader, and their replacements are injured. And the head coach is starting his mornings with a public “Life sucks and then you die, har-har. Kidding. Not kidding.” This isn’t subtext, it’s text.

The Dolphins have already given up. They are the football equivalent of a cry for help. Defending them would merely be feeding their dysfunction.

A Reading From the Lamentations of the 49ers Wide Receivers

Brandon Aiyuk remains on the PUP list as he recovers from last year’s Week 7 ACL/MCL/meniscus tear. There’s no timetable for his return, only vague-but-sunny reports that he’s ahead of schedule.

"It looks like he's out there doing a lot, hanging around the guys," Kyle Shanahan said last week, per ESPN’s Nick Wagoner. "I know he is in all the meetings and stuff and he does his rehab in the morning, does a little bit more in the afternoon walk-through. I love him being around ... and doing all that stuff. I know having an injury is frustrating but he's going about it the right way."

Shanahan sounds a little checked-out on Aiyuk, who didn’t play all that well last year in the two months between signing a reported $120-million contract and getting hurt.

Jauan Jennings reaggravated a calf injury last week which had been bothering him throughout OTAs. There is no timetable for Jennings’ return. The mood surrounding him is cautious and worried. Jennings had a breakout season when everyone else was injured in 2025. He’s expected to be the 49ers’ WR1 until Aiyuk returns, and then beyond.

Ricky Pearsall is fine, thank heavens, after starting camp on the PUP with a hamstring injury. He missed much of his rookie training camp with nagging injuries, then got shot in the chest during a robbery attempt in late August.

“You can't really rehab a gunshot wound,” Pearsall said last week. “So I basically rolled out of bed and started running routes in Week 7 ... From Week 7 on, that was my training camp.”

Pearsall went on to catch 31 passes in 2025. He’s the 49ers’ de facto WR1 right now.

Fourth-round pick Jordan Watkins missed practice last Friday for undisclosed reasons. Fortunately, he was back on Saturday. Watkins, a speedster from Ole Miss, was one of the standouts of OTAs and the early days of camp. David Lombardi of the San Francisco Standard sets the stage:

Purdy’s best play Monday came as he sprinted to his right, away from the 49ers’ pass rush. The defense figured he’d simply throw the ball away. But suddenly, Purdy uncorked a laser back toward the middle of the field. It surprised even veteran receiver Demarcus Robinson, who initially thought it was an inaccurate pass intended for him. It was actually a perfect throw to rookie Jordan Watkins, who caught the ball in stride and reversed field on the unsuspecting defense.

Shanahan’s offense is notoriously difficult for rookie receivers to master. The 49ers hope Watkins can be a clear-out threat off the bench as a rookie. As that engagingly-florid recounting of a training-camp rep illustrates, he’s currently a starter.

Demarcus Robinson pleaded no-contest to a DUI charge last week. Per police reports, he was driving over 100 miles-per-hour when pulled over last November, and his license was invalid. He faces a likely three-game NFL suspension.

Robinson had a reputation as a ninny long before the DUI. He caught 31 passes and seven touchdowns for the Rams last year, but Sean McVay began phasing him out of the offense late in the year. Most camp chatter about Robinson has either involved the DUI charge or his reaction to Purdy throwing lasers to Watkins.

Second-year receiver Jacob Cowing earned rave reviews during OTAs, then pulled a hamstring on the first day of camp. He hasn’t been seen since.

Russell Gage posted some high-volume statistics for the Falcons in the Matt Ryan era before tearing a patellar tendon in August of 2023. Gage hasn’t played since. He signed with the 49ers in January. He has been “turning heads” in camp. Such dizzying praise for a 29-year old reclamation project should provide the grain of salt you need to digest the steaming praise heaped upon Watkins and pre-injury Cowing.

The 49ers recently signed Andy Isabella. I remember Isabella from 2019 Senior Bowl week. It rained hammers and nails all week, preventing most media from watching practices. Senior Bowl director Jim Nagy, in an obliging mood (those would soon become rare), sent a dozen players to the convention center for an ad hoc consolation-prize press conference. After interviewing Terry McLaurin and others, I noticed an unassuming 5-foot-9 lad in street clothes fiddling with his phone, looking for all the world like one of Nagy’s little gophers. After much Google image searching, I asked him if he was Andy Isabella. And soon a small gaggle of us interviewed the fellow from UMass. Or perhaps he was indeed just some assistant event organizer who was fucking with us.

Isabella has caught five passes in the last four years. The Niners waived him on Tuesday.

Isaiah Hodgins, formerly of the Bills and Giants, is clinging to the bottom of the 49ers roster. Hodgins spent most of last year on the Giants practice squad.

The 49ers signed Robbie Chosen, formerly Robby Anderson, on Saturday. Chosen is best remembered for misidentifying the Panthers mascot as a bear. He has 25 receptions for three teams over the last three years, but at least he makes Robinson seem less flighty by comparison.

UDFA Isaiah Neyor spent so much time in the transfer portal that his nickname should be Chief O’Brien. He played for Wyoming, Texas and Nebraska, with brief commitments to Tennessee and Louisville sprinkled in, plus an ACL tear back in 2022. Per Matt Maiocco, Neyor put on a show on the second day of camp:

Neyor extended his 6-foot-4-inch frame over veteran safety Jason Pinnock — as well as 49ers defensive backs Darrell Luter Jr. and Dallis Flowers — to come down with an acrobatic catch in traffic to highlight Day 2 of training camp.

Neyor caught Mac Jones’ pass approximately 50 yards down the field.

“My mentality going into a pass like that is, ‘It’s either my ball or it’s nobody’s,’ ” Neyor told NBC Sports Bay Area. “It’s a pass I’ve seen numerous times throughout my career. My mentality is just to come down with it. Mac gave me an opportunity, and I went and made the play.”

Who doesn’t love a good second-day-of-camp UDFA Jump High Catch Good story?

The Niners waived Neyor on Tuesday.

Seventh-round pick Junior Bergen played college football at Montana with the son of special teams coordinator Brant Boyer. The 49ers have not been all that shy about admitting that’s why they drafted him.

Oh, Marquez Calloway and Equanimeous St. Brown were both briefly on the training camp roster before getting swapped out for Isabella and Chosen. St. Brown is apparently back. I am getting confused.

The watchwords for the 49ers receiver corps are not doom and gloom but volatility and variance. The Niners have an 11.3-win FTN Almanac projection and are +110 to go over 10.5 wins. George Kittle and Christian McCaffrey give them a firm offensive “floor,” though both are in their late primes and have worrisome injury histories. The early-season schedule is highly manageable – the 49ers don’t face a 2024 playoff team in their first four weeks – but there’s a big difference between heading to the season opener in Seattle with Aiyuk-Jennings-Pearsall as the top three receivers and Pearsall-Gage-Watkins or somesuch.

Yes, it’s still early August. But the 49ers would not be rifling through the bargain bin for veteran Chosen-types if they were not a little worried that they will need ready-to-play receivers for Week 1.

In other news, Brock Purdy and his wife just had their first baby. Jenna Purdy was apparently back on her feet and able to bring little Millie Joleen early in the week. Maybe she should share her recovery secrets with the wide receiver corps.

Kliff Kingsbury’s Own Personal Exegesis

Former WaPo writer Ben Standig now has an excellent Commanders newsletter called Last Man Standig. He profiled Kliff Kingsbury on Sunday, revealing that the offensive coordinator enjoyed an extended overseas vacation in the offseason, though Kingsbury was mum on precisely where he went.

Kliff Kingsbury vanished again — but stayed for Jayden Daniels

“I hopped around Europe,” Kingsbury said. “I don’t remember exactly which countries.”

Kingsbury is exactly the sort of pampered American sports doofus who is wealthy enough to visit Nice or the Amalfi Coast but parochial and self-centered enough to not realize he’s there. I don’t picture him scuttering across rooftops or picnicking with Grace Kelly like Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief, but trying to find a Starbucks with decent wifi in Dubrovnik.

But hey, it’s (probably still) Michael Bidwill’s money: if you are forced to pay for your own turkey wraps in the team cafeteria for four years, you might as well splurge on a Royale With Cheese in St. Tropez.

(Four paragraphs in, and not a single suggestive “One Night in Bangkok” wisecrack. I am growing as a person.)

It wasn’t all topless beaches and ugly Americanisms during Mister Kingsbury’s Holiday, however. Kingsbury watched every snap of every 2024 NFL game during the offseason. “Every. Single. One,” Standig assures us.

Oh no, not this again. Kingsbury is now Mike McCarthy, but with a horizontal-striped shirt and a baguette instead of a “rustic barn.”

Forgive me for not gasping in astonishment at Kingsbury’s marathon film-watching accomplishment. But:

• Watching every snap of every game is not all that hard; and

• He almost certainly didn’t do it.

To address the latter bullet point first, let’s take the 38-0 Broncos victory over the Chiefs in Week 18. The Chiefs had nothing to play for and rested all of their starters. By the fourth quarter, Chris Oladokun was their quarterback, facing Jarrett Stidham. Did Kingsbury actually watch those two quarterbacks hand off to Audric Estime and Carson Steele, notebook in hand, carefully making detailed observations? If he did, it represented a monumental waste of time.

I have watched enough film, and have watched experts watch enough film, to know that there is almost nothing to be discerned from the fourth quarters of blowouts. Kingsbury, a busy coach, surely knows there are better uses of his time than breaking down route concepts from the fourth quarter of a 31-6 Jets loss to the Cardinals from last November. If he really “watched,” it was performative, and his mind was either on the next game he planned to spool up or on a beach somewhere.

OK, so Kingsbury probably watched about 80% of last year’s NFL snaps. Big whoop. I am certain I personally watched over 60%. The film experts who obsessively rank and re-rank quarterbacks probably watch close to 80%. That’s our job, and his job.

Kingsbury watches film more closely and expertly than I do, which certainly requires a greater time commitment. But he also processes what he’s watching much more quickly, which reduces that time commitment. And what else does he have to do during those long winter and spring office hours? Study potential free agents? That requires watching film. Preparing for next year’s opponents? Watching film. Marveling at the amount of film an NFL coach watches is like marveling at the number of nails a carpenter hammers.

The “every single snap” trope is fan service for those who have come to think of film study as some alchemic, semi-mystical discipline. Watch enough NFL film (never tape, but film), with proper reverence, and one might become a “ball knower,” a possessor of secret gnosticism, fluent in the druidic language of play-calling and scout-speak, etc.

Watching NFL film, in fact, is a lot like reading the bible.

You should be a little skeptical of anyone who claims to read the bible cover-to-cover. Are they really slogging through the genealogies; the census figures in Numbers; the ultra-precise legalese of Deuteronomy (especially if they are, say, Catholic); the redundant chunks of Kings and Chronicles; the ranting, baffling minor prophets; the dull sermonizing of the Pseudo-Pauline epistles; and the boring bits of Revelations before the Whore of Babylon shows up to liven the party?

If so, why? Wouldn’t the time a (say) Christian pastor spends reading the temple specifications in Nehemiah be better spent doubling down on interpretations of The Sermon on the Mount, or actually talking to parishioners about their problems and needs?

The same questions can be applied to film-study. Watching every snap means watching third-string quarterbacks, teams who have turned over their coaching staffs and rosters, blowouts, bad-weather games and opponents the team you care about won’t face in 2025. It’s too unfocused to represent a true quest for knowledge, because NFL film, like the bible, is full of meaningful moments and trivial ones, incomprehensible passages, easy-to-misinterpret ones, some important events of the past that don’t really have much relevance to the presence and lots of contradictory information from which we can cherry-pick what we want to believe. Watching (reading) all of it is much more informative than watching none of it, but no one suddenly grows a third all-seeing eye simply by crossing some “hours watched” threshold. Some folks, in fact, might end up a little misguided, if not daffy.

Kingsbury, in this context, is like a rabbi or biblical scholar. He knows what he is looking at and why. May he gorge on film that is as sweet as honey in his mouth!

As for the rest of us, let’s not gawk at how much film coaches allegedly watch as if coaching were a hotdog eating contest. Kingsbury performed many important coaching acts this offseason which had nothing to do with how many snaps he watched. Even those long strolls along unnamed beaches played their role. Winter will surely come, and every coach will then value his memories of summer sunsets over unnamed beaches more than the hours spent studying Chris Oladokun.

Open Letter to the Dude Carrying Two Large Pizzas and a Carton of Wings onto the Ocean City Beach

I loathe you. With every fiber of my being.

I hope the seagulls go full Tippi Hedren on your wife. I hope they poop on your baby’s head. I hope their insistent swooping and cawing frightens your children so thoroughly that they don’t want to go down the shore again until their prom weekends. I’m too protective of the sanctity of human life to want to see them pecking at your bloated carcass as if you were an upside-down horseshoe crab, but it’s taking some real patience and grace for me to stay that way.

Two pizzas and a pile of wings? With no beach tent? Not even an umbrella? What the hell were you thinking? Do you enjoy sandy pizza? Have you ever even met a Jersey seagull? They are winged incontinent Snooki harpies, there are about a billion of them, and they share a group chat. By bringing a sit-down dinner for a family of four to an unshielded swatch of sand densely populated by unsuspecting strangers, you have sentenced dozens of people within a 25-foot radius to strafing runs and aerial bombardment.

Oh, and I know you aren’t from Iowa or some barren wasteland with no beach etiquette, bucko. You’re from someplace like Mount Laurel. You should have learned your lesson when a flying shrew pecked an ice cream cone from your hand when you were four. Perhaps you repressed that memory. And also suppressed any consideration for your fellow humans. And never possessed the common sense required to not bring sticky, drippy foods into a gritty environment.

There’s a gazebo on the boardwalk, 50 paces away. There are benches, nearby napkins and plastic forks, a roof. Ocean City has taken effective anti-seagull measures to protect the boardwalk, including one enthusiastic-but-exhausted trained hawk flying officiously up and down the beach. There is even a designated recycling container for pizza boxes. Your family would rather enjoy their pizza and wings there. Your wife won’t still be cleaning congealed ocean-silt-and-mozzarella cement from your daughter’s hair when it’s time for school pictures next month. (There’s no way you would perform such a task yourself, you knuckle-dragging troglodyte.) And no one within your flight pattern will have to cope with a payload of buffalo-scented offal landing on their face.

Summer is short. Back-to-school time is imminent, as is back-to-football time. A few hours on the beach can be precious. No one is asking you to give them up. I’m trying to help you to help yourself and your neighbors. I have 50 years of beach experience. I beach better than Ken does. Courtesy and cleanliness are the cornerstones of positive experiences and lifelong memories for everyone. A rising tide lifts all boats, ideally to a height where it’s easier to shoot the seagulls.

You know what? Forget the olive branch. You would just use it as a topping for the slice that you wave around in the air as if you are offering up to Jesus while Pappy Poopington and the Black Beak Squadron scrambles.

I hope you parked with your rear bumper extended three millimeters into a hydrant zone. I hope they towed your car to Egg Harbor. I hope the impound lot is on Greenhead Fly Inlet. I hope the Lyft driver who takes you there likes to chitchat.

From hell’s heart, I stab at thee.

As for everyone else: enjoy your stay at the Jersey Shore, the friendliest place on earth!