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Hours after a June minicamp practice had ended, Jimmy Johnson was sitting in his office at the Dolphins' training facility when he glanced out the window and did a double take. There on the football field, all by himself, was starting halfback Karim Abdul-Jabbar, sprinting from goal line to goal line, slashing 90-degree cuts along the way. Johnson waved some of his assistants over to the window. "Look at this," he said in a stunned voice, pointing to the fleet Abdul-Jabbar, silhouetted against the late-afternoon sun.
It seems that during the off-season Abdul-Jabbar has been willing to do anything and everything to impress his coach. That's because last preseason Johnson acted as if the 23-year-old running back owed him a pound of flesh for holding out during the first two days of training camp. Johnson demoted Abdul-Jabbar to the fifth string and threw a barrage of verbal darts at him. But Abdul-Jabbar worked his way back into Johnson's good graces by running for 1,116 yards last season, becoming Miami's first 1,000-yard rusher since Delvin Williams in 1978. And at the June minicamp, Abdul-Jabbar—who even worked with an ophthalmologist to improve his peripheral vision—was the one Dolphin who repeatedly caught Johnson's eye.
"Karim is the guy who's really standing out," said Johnson. "He looks comfortable with everything we're doing, much more so than at anytime last year, even though he rushed for over 1,000 yards."
Johnson needs Abdul-Jabbar's talent to bloom fully if the second-year coach is to meet his oft-stated goal of getting the Dolphins to the 1999 Super Bowl. The main tenet of Johnson's offensive philosophy has always been to establish a rushing game at all costs. Even when the run gets stuffed, as it often did last season, Johnson will keep handing the ball to Abdul-Jabbar, who had 307 carries, a single-season Miami record. This explains why 36-year-old quarterback Dan Marino attempted fewer passes per game in 1996 than in any season since 1983, his rookie year.
Another part of Johnson's strategy is to infuse the team with fresh blood. Twenty-eight new players were on last season's final roster, including nine rookies; the average age of a Dolphins starter was 25.7, the youngest in the NFL. This year the team will be even greener, with Johnson predicting that nine or 10 rookies will make the squad. "We were the youngest team in the league when we won my first Super Bowl in Dallas," Johnson says. "I like young players. They stay healthy longer and get better as the year goes on."
Nowhere is this youth movement more apparent than in the defensive front seven. Tackles Daryl Gardener and Tim Bowens, both 24, are a step away from the Pro Bowl. Undersized but overachieving middle linebacker Zach Thomas was named the team's MVP at the tender age of 23 last year after finishing fifth in the NFL in tackles. Outside linebacker Anthony Harris, another 24-year-old, was an undrafted free agent who, because his motor never stops, became a Johnson favorite in '96. And outside linebacker Derrick Rodgers, a third-round draft choice out of Arizona State, will contribute immediately.
Miami's pass defense, ranked 24th in the NFL last season, will be bolstered by second-round choice Sam Madison, a cornerback out of Louisville who was one of the top man-to-man defenders in the draft. Safeties George Teague and Corey Harris, both signed as free agents in the off-season, are merely stopgaps, not long-term solutions for the Dolphins' weak defensive backfield.
The offense has a few more gray hairs than the D, but it's still a relatively young group. The line, led by the left tackle-guard tandem of Richmond Webb, 30, and Keith Sims, 30, was inconsistent last season, but Webb still made the Pro Bowl. Marino signed a one-year contract extension in June, so he's now locked up through 1999. Whether or not he'll last that long is anybody's guess—Marino has missed 16 games over the last four years because of a variety of injuries. Whoever throws the ball (Craig Erickson is the backup) will have talented targets in veteran wideouts O.J. McDuffie, 27, Fred Barnett, 31, and rookie Yatil Green, a first-round draft pick from the University of Miami who Johnson feels can be a faster version of Michael Irvin.
"I like what I see," Johnson says. "I'm excited about this team—not just hopeful, but excited." They're at least a year away from a title, but Johnson has good reason for his enthusiasm.
—by Lars Anderson
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