New Miami Dolphins head coach Adam Gase has shown a surprising amount of fire during his first few months on the job. But that might help explain why he's so excited to work with wide receiver Jarvis Landry, who was one of the only consistent spark plugs on a disappointing Dolphins team from a year ago.
"I'm real excited to get around Jarvis, just the way that he plays and seeing what he does on film," Gase said at the AFC Coaches Breakfast in Boca Raton last week, via the team's official site. "I mean, he's around a lot and I see him in the weight room a lot. There's an intensity there that I'm really excited to kind of be around this guy because he's such a competitor."
He added: "It's interesting to me, he's one of those guys that I think a lot of people didn't see this coming and he felt like, I'm going to prove a lot of people wrong. I like being around guys like that, that have a chip on their shoulder. And you can tell, he still feels like there's a respect factor that he doesn't get that he's looking for and he plays like that."
Gase seems to have nailed it with Landry. On a dream team type roster (remember, not always a complement in the NFL) with so many high profile players or expensive free agents, it was his 110 receptions for 1,157 yards that really stood out in a season where the team fired their head coach a month into the season.
In two years, Landry has 194 catches for 1,915 yards. That's more catches than Sammy Watkins (125), Mike Evans (142) and Odell Beckham (187). He was named to the Pro Bowl as a replacement, but it still feels like the respect factor is lagging. Landry plays that way at least.
As Gase builds his roster with the aid of Mike Tannenbaum, it seems like these types of home-grown players will be the ones he leans on more than anything. Once again, they'll take the field with high expectations thanks to Mario Williams, Byron Maxwell and Kiko Alonso but home grown talent is so much more valuable.
