Dolphins RB Coach Enjoying His Deepest Room

The Miami Dolphins don't just go deep passing the ball. They have a running back room that returns last season's key contributors and adds another player with potential for 2024. There is only one ball to go around for one of the league's best ground attacks.

Raheem Mostert scores a touchdown past New York Jets safety Tony Adams during the first half of a game at Hard Rock Stadium last season. / Jim Rassol / USA TODAY NETWORK

Miami Dolphins running backs coach Eric Studesville has a problem going into the 2024 season that he maybe didn't have at this time last year. His running back room has plenty of options ready and waiting to carry the ball. The problem? There is only one ball to go around.

The Dolphins running back corps returns 1,000-yard rusher Raheem Mostert, versatile second-year back De'Von Achane (who registered 800 yards and eight touchdowns on 112 carries last season), capable rotational options Chris Brooks and Jeff Wilson Jr., and for good measure added 2024 fourth-round rookie Jaylen Wright.

Studesville is the longest-tenured position coach on the Dolphins, having arrived in 2018 and being the only one to work under the team's last three head coaches — Adam Gase, Brian Flores and Mike McDaniel. This probably is the deepest running back room he's had with the Dolphins.

Studesville says his group "performed really well" last season. The Dolphins finished sixth in rushing yards per game with 135.8 and rushing yards per play with 5.06. The addition of Wright gives the Dolphins another ball carrier to "keep pushing the envelope," something Studesville said is the goal.

Despite a heightened competitive atmosphere, the room is meshing.

"Jaylen has been you know taken instantly into the room. And all those guys, whether it's Jeff Wilson, whether it's Raheem, whether it's (fullback Alec Ingold] talking to him," Studesville said. "That room, a running back room is a very unique place, because, and I was just saying this to someone today, that a running back room is full of some of the most selfish people inherently there are. Because they all want to be the guy that has the ball. And reality is there's only one ball in every play. Not everybody can get it.

"So to take a group of individuals that inherently have those feelings inside of them, and to be so unselfish in a group, to help the person sitting next to you to want the team to be better, I think speaks volumes for the quality of people we have in that room."

While the Dolphins have a deep arsenal at the position, at this moment there is no forecast for how exactly they will use their ball carriers this season, whether that question is who or how.

"I think we have to wait to see, you know, and come back camp, see how camp goes," Studesville said. "And we have to see, you know ... this is a long marathon that we're running here. So you just never know how it starts. That it may start out one way and adjust part way through it, it may not, I don't know that. We won't know that until we get into it and get going."