Hours away from their game against the Bengals, the Dolphins are trying to do the impossible: they’re trying to erase something from the internet.
As almost everyone knows, once something is on the internet it’s nearly impossible to erase it, and the Dolphins are finding out the hard way after some of their practice footage was leaked online Wednesday. The footage was taken during a team visit held at Nippert Stadium, home of the Cincinnati Bearcats.
The Dolphins weren’t supposed to hold practices in Cincinnati this week, but those plans had to change Tuesday when it became clear Hurricane Ian was going to hit Florida hard. Due to the hurricane, the Dolphins were forced to depart earlier than planned for their trip to Cincinnati. The team had to scramble to find a place to train and that’s how they ended up in Nippert.
The problem with the practice at Nippert is that it’s basically in a central location on the University of Cincinnati campus, which means students were spending all day there. The other problem with practicing at Nippert is that even though the stadium is closed to the public, it’s still easy to peek inside. Because of those two issues, it was easy for UC students to catch a glimpse of the Dolphins as they practiced Wednesday.
Several students clearly decided to take a video of the practice and these videos were shared by UC Barstool account. In the video below, you can see a brief overview of what was shared.
After seeing the footage online, the team was not happy to see that the video had leaked. After the footage was shared on social media, the Dolphins immediately sent a letter to Barstool asking them to remove the tweets.
“We are seeking to have these posts removed immediately from Twitter as this content capture was neither authorized nor authorized,” the Dolphins wrote in a letter.
The twist here is that Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel actually noticed the students watching and possibly filming Miami practice, so he decided to do something about it. According on NFL.comMcDaniel put 12 offensive players on the field for each practice so anyone who saw the footage wouldn’t have the full picture of what the Dolphins were up to.
You can look at this two ways: it’s either a brilliant tactic or the Dolphins wasted a tour trying to fool some students. Although the NFL investigated the situation, the league concluded that there was no competitive violation, according The Washington Post.
Some Dolphins fans on Twitter compared this to Spygate, but let’s face it, those are two totally different situations. In Spygate, the Patriots were punished for knowingly filming an opponent’s sideline in an effort to try to figure out defensive hand signals from the coaching staff. In this case, some random student was walking around in a public space, realized they could see the Dolphins practice and then decided to film it and that’s clearly the same conclusion the NFL has come to since the league found no competitive violations in its brief investigation.
Despite the issues, the Dolphins still thanked the University of Cincinnati for letting them use Nippert.
The AFC showdown between the Bengals and Dolphins will begin at 8:15 p.m. ET on Amazon Prime.
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