Dolphins get good news as two key starters show significant injury recovery progress during mandatory minicamp

The Miami Dolphins are set to enter into the 2025 season with as one of the most difficult teams to project in all of football. Will quarterback Tua Tagovailoa stay healthy? Can wide receiver Tyreek Hill return to form? What will the Dolphins' new-look secondary look like after presumably trading cornerback Jalen Ramsey? Will tight end Jonnu Smith be on the team? How well will the team's offensive line gel with three new starters this season? 

It's all a jigsaw puzzle of possibilities for a team facing external (and internal) pressure to win in 2025. Team owner Stephen Ross released a statement after Miami's season-ending loss to the New York Jets in Week 18 to announce the team was keeping both head coach Mike McDaniel and general manager Chris Grier — but that the effort of 2024 was not good enough. 

Miami enters 2025 with an overhaul of talent on the defensive side of the ball and some selective bets to improve the team's biggest issues on the offensive side. The good news for Miami is that the lingering questions surrounding some of the injured standouts on offensive seem to be coming into focus with positive developments. 

Both wide receiver Tyreek Hill and offensive guard James Daniels showed positive trends in their rehab yesterday during the first day of Miami Dolphins mandatory minicamp. Hill was spotted catching footballs after offseason wrist surgery — the first time he's been catching anything other than tennis balls at the team facility this offseason. It's all a part of his scheduled rehab and head coach Mike McDaniel said on Wednesday that Hill was trying to "shortchange the process in a healthy way" by pushing the envelope of his rehab timeline. 

The Dolphins expect Hill to be ready for full participation in plenty of time for the start of the season — but him getting action catching the football nearly two months ahead of the start of training camp is a positive sign. 

For Daniels, the Dolphins are betting on his recovery from an Achilles tear early in 2024. And, for the first time during the offseason program, Daniels was spotted participating in on-field work yesterday. 

"That's a guy (Daniels) that has understood what his opportunity is here, understood how much we're counting on him and understood that he was starting the process recovering from an injury — he has done an absolutely fantastic job of phase one and phase two...He had a great day on the field working in individual yesterday, working in individual and I could see what he's done in the last month on the field for the first time with my own eyes. I haven't got to see those drills, I've just got to see him in the meeting room and talk in the meeting room and seeing how he's received information...I'm fired up for that part of it because I got to see, not hear, how he sees his offseason." 

Miami will need that rehab process to continue to progress into training camp with, hopefully, a fully-cleared Daniels ready to start the season. If Miami can boast a group that features Daniels among the starting five, the team should feel as though their biggest shortcoming of 2024 has been dramatically improved. Mike McDaniel went as far as to spotlight the trench play as a big domino in why the team had to play the way they did offensively last season. 

There's plenty of time left before the Dolphins start playing for keeps. But amid all the questions this team faces, it's nice to get a few positive answers in the early portion of June.