MIAMI GARDENS — This is the NFL. You keep telling yourself that, as if repeating it will eventually make your brain accept something this illogical.
This is the NFL, darnit. It’s where players spend entire offseasons learning playbooks. This isn’t some place where a guy rolls into town, is introduced to his head coach on a Saturday morning and ends up in a hastily created uniform that afternoon. It’s not where coaches send that guy onto the field knowing he doesn’t know the plays, so they have to spell out what he should do on every play. Not to mention, it’s a minor miracle if many teammates know his name, since he only knows a few of theirs.
No, stuff like this never happens because, that’s right, this is the NFL.
Miami Dolphinsfans, meet the
new linebacker wearing No. 34, Stephen Dix Jr.
Coach Jeff Hafley just met him a minute or two ago himself.
“Never happened to me in my life,” Hafley said, as if still trying to convince himself that the guy playing inside linebacker for the Dolphins in the second half of their 26-3 loss to the New York Giants was indeed the guy plucked off the street a day earlier. The guy who arrived in the home-team locker room at Hard Rock Stadium with his carry-on and a backpack.
“All I brought with me,” Dix said.
Then, a series of events, especially an ankle injury to Trey Moore, pressed Dix into duty, playing a total of (appropriately enough) 34 snaps.
Dix responded with three tackles.
And a story to someday tell his grandchildren.
“I mean, it didn’t happen the way that I imagined,” Dix said. “But it happened. So I’ve just got to run with that. And, honestly, this makes the story so much better.”
Young Steve Dix had to learn how to walk all over again
There isn’t much that could make Dix’s story better even before this weekend. Not when you consider he has a shot at making an NFL roster even though, back when he was in grade school in Orlando, he had to learn how to walk all over again after a couple of procedures to insert titanium stents in both of his feet. But that’s getting ahead of the story.
Let’s rewind instead to the morning of Saturday, Aug. 22, a handful of hours before the 4 p.m. preseason game vs. the Giants.
“Shoot,” Hafley said. “We had a linebacker who I met this morning in my office, Steve. Came in, met him, and he started the whole second half where we had to tell him the call, he had to give the call (in the huddle), then we had to tell him what to do on every single play. So we were able to play only like two calls in the second half.”
Dix wasn’t going in that cold. He did have about 30 minutes with Al Washington, the linebackers coach.
“They told me, ‘Look, bro, just go out there, run sideline to sideline. I’m going to be in your ear. I’m going to tell you the call and I’m going to tell you what to do,’ ” Dix said.
Daunted? Considering Dix's NFL hopes may have been hanging in the balance, plenty of players would have been. Dix?
“That’s literally any player’s dream — get told what to do and just go play ball,” he said. “So it was exciting.”
Dix, 24, is 6-feet-1 and 246 pounds out of Arkansas. He went undrafted this year, signed with Arizona but was let go. Early this past week, he tried out for the Dolphins, then headed back to Central Florida hoping for a call. The day before the Giants game, that call came. One of the first things Dix did was call his father, Stephen Dix Sr., who had endured that roller coaster of a week with his son.
“He just went crazy over the phone,” Steve Jr. said. “So that’s a real wholesome moment for me and my father. He’s the one that really raised me up, man. This is his dream and mine.”
Dix Sr. served in the Army before becoming an Orange County deputy sheriff. He was big on doing push-ups and sit-ups daily. So too his young son.
“Junior was a big, strong, healthy boy,” Dix Sr. told The Athletic in 2019. “He started really knocking ’em out to the point where you’d be like, ‘Man, this is one strong little dude.’ ”
Except by fifth grade, Steve was experiencing pain in his legs from a condition relatively common that required the stents. Those afflicted, Dr. Victory McNamara told The Athletic, “have difficulty running fast. They work real hard but they don’t go anywhere. It’s like running on beach sand.”
Logistically, it complicates rehab to do both feet at once, so after two separate procedures and a few months of recovery, Dix was back on his feet, even if it meant not playing football for two years. When his father says his son “went through a lot” to even play college ball, it’s not hyperbole.
Willie Taggart recruited Dix while at Florida State
Seeing No. 34 on the field for the Dolphins (even if Dix signed too late for his name to appear on the gameday rosters) likely was a sense of pride for one member of the Giants’ coaching staff. Willie Taggart, the former FAU coach, is now the Giants’ running backs coach. He was instrumental in recruiting Dix to his first collegiate stop, FSU, while Taggart was on Jimbo Fisher’s staff.
If the tale of an unknown Dolphins player getting tossed into a sink-or-swim situation rings a bell, it’s because an even more striking tale occurred in 2013.
Safety Michael Thomas, newly signed off the San Francisco 49ers practice squad and known to many teammates only as “No. 34,” was pressed into emergency duty for a home game against New England. Like Dix, Thomas had to be told what to do before each play. Meanwhile, Tom Brady zeroed in on him in a desperate comeback attempt.
With two seconds left, Thomas intercepted Brady’s fourth-down pass in the end zone to preserve a 24-20 victory. It launched Thomas’ 10-year NFL career, which included five seasons with the Dolphins and one Pro Bowl appearance.
Regardless of whether this is just a start for Dix, this was a night he’ll always remember.
“I’m doing exactly what I set out to do as a kid, and the journey doesn’t stop here," he said. "It’s obviously putting together enough days to make the team and continue my career.
“Today was just surreal.”
Hal Habib covers the Miami Dolphins for The Palm Beach Post. He can be reached at HHabib@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Inside the 'surreal' crash course for Dolphins LB Steve Dix | Habib
