MIAMI GARDENS — When the words “players-only meeting” are mentioned in sports, alarms start sounding.
Are there internal problems within the team? Are players not accepting the coaching of their head man? Is a proverbial panic button being pushed within the walls of team facilities?
For the Miami Dolphins, it occurred one week into their 2025 season.
Dolphins players led their own meeting this week, following their season-opening debacle of a 33-8 loss to the Indianapolis Colts, which was firmly the worst Week 1 performance by any NFL team.
According to linebacker and one of the team captains, Jordyn Brooks, as the team turns the page to a home opener against the New England Patriots, it was about keeping teammates “locked in.”
“Losing the way we did Week 1, it can be discouraging,” Brooks said Thursday. “Outside noise, people talking, fans talking, family talking, whoever, everybody talking, but it’s just kind of making sure that everybody is together.
“When you lose like that, it’s easy for people to get discouraged and start looking and questioning maybe yourself or others, so making sure that we all lock back in and making sure that the belief is still there. You lose belief, you don’t have nothing. So making sure that everybody is still on the same page and come back next week stronger.”
Wide receiver Tyreek Hill said the meeting was about setting the right standard and holding teammates accountable.
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Quarterback Tua Tagovailoa has begun holding film sessions on player off days Tuesday and said, after the loss to the Colts, he was going to be interested to see who was back for the second such meeting.
“I thought that that was the cool thing,” he said. “Win, lose, you got to see a lot of the same guys back in the film room, back in the meeting rooms, and I thought that was a cool thing.”
The news of a player meeting blew up on a national scale between Thursday evening and Friday morning, when it was a hot topic on sports talk shows like ESPN’s “First Take.”
“I’m not really concerned with what people on the outside think or are concerned about,” safety Minkah Fitzpatrick said Friday. “We had a necessary conversation. Player meetings happen whether we’re doing really well or whether we’re doing poorly. It’s a part of professional sports. So I don’t think there’s any need for concern.”
Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel was in favor of players gathering on their own this week, believing it’s a testament that they are still invested after a demoralizing defeat to start the season.
“I think player-led meetings are important,” McDaniel said Friday. “I think the gravity of this one, in particular, it’s something that we’ve done in the offseason. It is a part of how we do things, based upon my beliefs, and what maximizes investment is ownership. So, I think it’s important that players feel they have the ability and the desire to do that. That fires me up.
McDaniel added it’s been blown out of proportion with the fact the team did have one.
“It feels a lot different than 0-1 based on how we lost,” he said. “So I think there’s natural things with that, that those guys wanted to make sure everyone was on the same page and moving in the same direction. … We need to get our ducks in a row and make sure that what happened before doesn’t happen again. I was happy with that, but I was more happy with the way guys approached their jobs connected throughout the week.”
The fact the Dolphins held a meeting led by players is no new development. They occurred rather frequently last season. McDaniel has known them to be commonplace at all his stops across the NFL.
“Every year, there’s been some to some degree,” McDaniel said. “I think it’s important that the leaders of the locker room have a voice that’s heard, and one of the ways they can do that is isolate the players in the room and have a very transparent conversation.
McDaniel didn’t ask what was said in the meeting, nor did he care. He merely wanted to see how players responded in the week of practice.
“I wanted to see a unified effort on the practice field moving forward,” McDaniel said. “We’ve had two days of that (Wednesday and Thursday entering Friday practice).”
