Dolphins HC Jeff Hafley Talks Malik Willis, De’Von Achane & More with Rich

De'Von Achane got a warning from his head coach on Monday morning, and it had nothing to do with ball security.

"I just gave Achane a heads-up this morning, and told him he better be in good shape," Jeff Hafley said on the show, "because I told him there might be some games where I have to pick him up and carry him back into the locker room, because he's going to be so tired."

Hafley also told his running back he never wants to see a head tap all season. Achane looked him in the eye and promised he would never give one. The coach's answer: "After you touch the ball 40, 45 times, I might have to pick you up and I'll carry you back in the locker room."

Rich mentioned Marshall Faulk, who would lose his mind watching a back tap his helmet after two or three touches. Hafley has a countermeasure. "If Achane starts tapping his head, I'm just going to start beating my head and giving him the ball again." A wink from the sideline is permitted. The helmet tap is not.

The touches matter because Malik Willis is taking over an offense for the first time. Hafley said the reps with the ones are new for him and the confidence is showing, along with a firmer grip on Bobby Slowik's scheme. The other day Willis pulled the offense together before practice on his own.

Pressed on whether Willis can be fairly evaluated after Jaylen Waddle was sent to Denver, Hafley started up front. "Brewer, I think is one of the best leaders and one of the best guys on our team, and I think he's one of the best centers in the NFL," he said, before running through Proctor, the first-round pick now at guard, Jonah, and Pat Paul. He called Achane one of the top backs in football and pointed to camps from Malik Washington, Greg Dulcich and Caleb Douglas.

Success for Willis, in Hafley's definition, is not a number. "Improvement," he said. "I want to see improvement, and I want to see confidence, and I want to see leadership, and I want to see some moments where he's capable of taking over a game, which I truly believe that he's going to do."

Nobody in Miami is playing the disrespect card. Hafley has 23 rookies on the roster and reads the one-win and zero-win predictions, but he refuses to hand them to his team. "What's that going to do? It's going to fire them up for 10 seconds. That's not real." His version of the right way is players believing in themselves, then in each other, then playing harder than the opponent, built to last rather than a quick fix that implodes.

He knows the ceiling of that mindset because he coached it twice. Darrelle Revis, whose junior year at Pitt he coached, was so angry the first time anyone caught a comeback on him that Hafley never forgot it. Richard Sherman refused to let a ball be caught on him in a walkthrough, even when the script called for it.

Talent is not what separates those two, in Hafley's telling. "It's just different up here," he said, and he brings it up with young players because the modern version, the shrug and the tag off after a five-yard completion, would have been unthinkable to either of them.

He took the call from a conference room, which turned out to be the same room where the Dolphins offered him the job, every seat filled, Marino and Aikman among them.