After an extremely difficult extended weekend that saw the Dolphins get pushed around by the Bears on Thursday night and the Jets and Patriots pull out tightly contested victories yesterday, the team was back to work earlier today.
Just as the short week last week served as a disadvantage to the banged up Dolphins, this week will be beneficial to their preparations, as they have a couple extra days of practice time to get ready for their cross-country trip to Oakland.
These practices have extra intrigue when you have a team as injury depleted as the Dolphins are. Surely enough, today’s practice reports shed a little light into the health of this football team.
To start off on a positive note, Chad Henne was back out there practicing today after being sidelined all last week with an unspecified knee injury. Tyler Thigpen shouldn’t be judged by one game behind nonexistent protection, but if this team has any shot at running the table, you have to believe Chad Henne needs to be under center.
Unfortunately, Henne’s go to threat, Brandon Marshall, wasn’t able to go as he recovers from that hamstring injury he suffered near the end of the first-half on Thursday night. With no Marshall and no running game, this offense isn’t capable of much, but thank goodness there is still a full week left of recovery time for Brandon to get healthy.
As for that revolving door of an offensive line, the Dolphins apparently aren’t ready to shut down Jake Long just yet. Long continues to work as the starting left tackle after reports circled around the web over the weekend that the Dolphins were entertaining the idea of putting Jake on IR. They even went as far as to work out Tony Ugoh and Levi Jones, but eventually decided to only bring in depth at center.
With Joe Berger missing last week and Cory Procter blowing out his knee against the Bears, the Dolphins decided to sign veteran center Eric Ghiaciuc, who started 42 games for the Cincinnati Bengals from 2005-2008.
On the defensive side of the ball, Phillip Merling saw his first practice action of the season. Merling was originally thought to be out for the year when he tore his Achilles’ tendon shortly before training camp, but has recovered quicker than expected, and can be activated any time before the end of the month.
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