Noah Lyles is not feared by the Miami Dolphins’ subculture of track and field stars.
Tyreek Hill’s bold claim that he would beat Lyles in a race prompted a dismissive response from Lyles on Friday. Then Miami’s Pro Bowl running back Raheem Mostert told Fox News Digital that he and other teammates could stack up to Lyles in a race.
"I feel like we all could run with him," Hill said of Lyles. "And I know that Noah Lyles brought up the fact that he would race Tyreek in a 60-yard dash or something like that? Or whatever the case may be, I feel like we all could run that 60-yard dash."
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The Dolphins have a trust tree of players on offense who starred in track and field at the high school and college levels. This includes Hill, Mostert, wide receiver Jaylen Waddle and running back DeVon Achane. Last season, their shared passion for the sport manifested in a weekly tradition of checking Next Gen Stats to see who ran the fastest speed in their most recent game.
Hill ran away with the lead in weekly titles in that competition last year, according to the Next Gen Stats archive.
It’s a tradition they are bringing back this season, and they are involving their newest offensive star, Odell Beckham Jr. The 31-year-old Beckham was, at his height, known for breaking away from defenders with elite speed. But now Beckham is working to earn his rank among some very fast teammates.
"We got him right on the tradition, we’re always checking those stats," Mostert said. "He’s running right now, and he keeps coming up to me, Tyreek, Waddle and all the fast guys, and he’s like ‘Hey look, this is my time that I ran so far,’ and we just give him a little hard time and say ‘That’s not fast enough.’ It’s always competitive when you’re dealing with speed."
Beckham began training camp on the physically-unable-to-perform list, but Mostert says the plan is to get him more involved in their sprinting culture once he’s ready.
"Not yet, he’s still working through some things. Eventually we will though," Mostert said when asked whether they’ve done any competitive sprints with Beckham yet.
But track and field isn’t the only sport that they’ve found inspiration from lately. Mostert says the team was tuned into the Olympics in the early parts of training camp when there were events during breaks.
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Mostert said they watched a handful of women’s track and field events, including Sydney McLaughlin breaking the world record and winning gold in the 400m hurdle final, and Gabby Thomas winning gold in the 200m final.
But it was another event, outside of track and field, that got them hyped and talking the most – Simone Biles winning gold in the women’s gymnastics all-around final. Mostert says that Biles routine, and how she finished the competition with a historic routine that earned a 15.066 that catapulted her to the lead over Brazil’s Rebecca Andrade, was directly inspirational to their mindset as a football team.
"We knew that she was in second at the time, and she had her final routine. The woman that was above her at the time was from Brazil, and she had more points, so we knew right off the bat that she had to basically score almost a perfect score in order to win, and she pretty much did," Mostert said.
"The biggest takeaway from that was don’t get too distracted from the results of somebody else, just keep focusing on you."
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Like Biles, Miami will face elite competition and will need to be strong at the end to achieve their golden goal of reaching the Super Bowl.
The Dolphins are heading into a season where they’ll look to make the playoffs for the third time. The last two years, they blew chances at the division lead to the Buffalo Bills, then lost in the first round of the playoffs to Buffalo and the Kansas City Chiefs. Both of those teams, along with the Cincinnati Bengals, Baltimore Ravens and Houston Texans, are projected to be just as good as, if not better than, last year.
With Hill, Mostert, Waddle, Achane and now Beckham, the group already knows that it can keep up with Lyles. How that confidence translates to potential matchups against Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen will set the ceiling of how far the Dolphins' offense can go.
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