Wednesday Dolphins Notebook: Numbers, Bevell, Odds, and More

Five players changed jersey numbers; former Dolphins players get tryouts

Several things come with the first week of the regular season opener, one of them being uniform number changes.

As the Dolphins returned to practice Wednesday, five players had switched numbers from what they wore in training camp: QB Skylar Thompson, RB Chris Brooks, CB Kelvin Joseph, CB Parry Nickerson and TE Tyler Kroft.

Thompson went from 19 to 6, Brooks from 33 to 35, Joseph from 35 to 9, Nickerson from 49 to 34, and Kroft from 48 to 82.

Thompson took the number previously worn by DB Trill Williams (and by Melvin Ingram last year); Brooks' switch means we're finally done with the dueling 33's with Brooks and Eli Apple; Joseph took the number of the player for whom he was traded, Noah Igbinoghene, while Kroft took a number much more common for tight ends, though he could have stayed with 48 had he wanted. He wore 81 at every one of his previous NFL stops — Cincinnati, Buffalo, the New York Jets and San Francisco.

Back to Thompson, once he appears in a game, he'll become the first Dolphins QB with that number since Jay Cutler in 2017.

BEVELL'S BATTLE

In the process of helping Tua Tagovailoa get ready for the 2023 regular season, QB Darrell Bevell had to deal with a pretty significant setback himself when he had to undergo surgery for a detached retina.

While he was recovering, Bevell spent a week forced to lie down and got some work in watching practice video on a laptop on the floor.

“If you want to talk about adversity being an opportunity, a great way to show people how much you care is lay down for a week and the only thing you look at is practice footage endlessly," head coach Mike McDaniel said. "There’s a lot of things that I haven’t really gone through. I can kind of venture to extrapolate what that would be like. A week? Like this? What was cool was the team moment with that because that little story, which people have their own stuff to worry about, but there’s so many stories like that where people are sacrificing things, going through things to contribute to this team whether it's coach or player.

"It wasn’t lost on the quarterbacks. You should have seen them. The first time we talked about it after he got the surgery, you should’ve seen their eyes light up. This practice is all Bev’s got going. He’s going to watch on his iPad for the next 24 hours, so live with that. They ended up, collectively all three of them, had a really good practice that particular day that it occurred. I think that’s a testament to who Bev is and the players on this team and how people are all in with each other.”

FORMER DOLPHINS NEWS

Rookie free agents Mitchell Agude and Keidron Smith made an impression during their time with the Miami Dolphins in training camp, to the point where it almost was a surprise that neither was re-signed to the practice squad.

Well, they performed well enough to catch the attention of teams around the league that decided to give them a tryout.

Agude, the edge defender from the University of Miami, worked out for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Sith, the defensive back from Kentucky, worked out for the Washington Commanders.

Meanwhile, Ingram remains without a team as the NFL regular season gets set to kick off, though that could be because of the rule guaranteeing vested veterans their full 2023 salary if they're on a Week 1 roster.

Regardless, Ingram made a point to comment on his free agent status on social media.

"Now I kno the @NFL ain’t gone start the season without me!" Ingram posted on X. "This sh*t getting out of hand now. I gotta see that script everybody talking bout."

UPDATING THE ODDS

A lot of numbers have changed when it comes to betting odds first posted after Super Bowl LVII, and for the Dolphins, it involves them moving up in some key categories.

For example, the Dolphins' odds of winning Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas have gone from 28/1 on Feb. 13 to 22/1 on Wednesday. The Dolphins are 10th among favorites, with four of the teams ahead of them now having longer odds than in February — Kansas City, Philadelphia, Buffalo and Cincinnati.

In terms of winning the AFC title, the Dolphins have gone from 14/1 to 9/1 and are tied for fourth with the New York Jets. The three favorites all have seen their odds get longer — the Chiefs, Bills and Bengals.

When it comes to the AFC East, the Dolphins have remained at 3/1, while Buffalo has become a bigger favorite (from 7/5 to 6/5) and the Jets and Patriots have gone in the other direction.