The Miami Dolphins took on the Washington Commanders at Northwest Stadium on Friday night in their preseason opener, and while they played their starters early, Jeff Hafley's team fell in his debut, losing 20-7.
These exhibition games don't mean much for fans watching, but for the players and coaches, there's a lot to learn and a lot to prove throughout the four quarters.
On Saturday, Hafley detailed one of his biggest coaching moments in the game when he decided to remove running back Ollie Gordon II from the contest after the 22-year-old was called for unsportsmanlike conduct after a three-yard run in the third quarter that would've given the Dolphins a third-and-5 instead of a third-and-19.
"We had an opportunity to continue a drive, and it's important to me – I'm not a big fan of pre-snap penalties and post-snap penalties like that; those are not acceptable to me," Hafley said. "It's disrespectful to the team, it's selfish, and it's how you lose games. And I'm not going to play players that can't control themselves and get us 15-yard penalties and have us go backwards and put our team in a bad position, put our coaches in a bad position. And that's a big learning lesson. I went over it with the team today.
"Ollie and I had a great conversation again this morning, and hopefully he'll learn from that, and our team will learn from it, but those are the quickest way to lose football games, and there's no place for that. And when I pulled him out, I'm not going to tell you exactly what I said to him, but it was a chance for me to look him in the eye and let him know that that was not okay and that I had to take him out and he had to learn his lesson, because if you're going to have a standard, there has to be consequences, or then your standard is just a bunch of BS if not. So our standard is we're not going to do things to put our team in jeopardy and have post-snap fouls where we throw a ball at a guy or toss a ball at a guy. Had a good talk with him immediately, pulled him out of the game and eventually let him go back in, but as far as the conversation goes, I'll just keep it between us. But it was a great time to teach him a lesson, to teach our team a lesson and move on, and move forward with Ollie and the rest of the guys."
Gordon finished with just 11 offensive snaps, which was the second-fewest of any running back on Miami's roster (Donovan Edwards had just two). However, when he did have the ball (and wasn't getting called for penalties), he was just as efficient as De'Von Achane. Gordon rushed for 39 yards on 5.6 yards per attempt.
If he continues to make these mistakes, he could find himself behind Jaylen Wright on the depth chart for the year, but if he runs as he did on Friday and eliminates those problems, he could be Achane's top backup.
This article originally appeared on Dolphins Wire: Jeff Hafley details tough coaching moment in Dolphins preseason debut
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