Dolphins’ Preston Williams cleared to practice, but next hurdle is learning new playbook

Miami Dolphins receiver Preston Williams was the team’s most productive rookie last season — before suffering a season-ending knee injury in November — and appears to be in position to pick up where he left off.

Williams flashed a ton of talent and upside in the eight games he started as a rookie, catching 32 passes for 428 yards and three touchdowns before tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee. The undrafted rookie did not begin training camp on the physically-unable-to-perform list and has been training with his teammates during the early stages of this season’s workouts.

Williams spent the past month rehabbing inside the team’s facility with specialists, and while head coach Brian Flores admits it’s difficult to gauge where players are athletically in this conditioning phase of the team’s work, Williams doesn’t seem to behind his teammates eight months into a rehab process that generally takes 9-12 months.

“Preston has worked extremely hard since the injury. He has worked his way back to where he was cleared for activity,” Flores said. “Again, it’s walk-through [work] right now. He has strength and conditioning in the morning. He’s running and lifting. We see him in the walk-through setting.”

Flores seemed more concerned with Williams’ ability to grasp Miami’s new playbook and terminology than the physical part of football.

The Dolphins inserted Williams into the starting lineup at the beginning of the 2019 season with the awareness that he didn’t firmly grasp the playbook, and the former Colorado State standout was occasionally running the wrong routes, and making mistakes on the field early.

Now Williams is being asked to learn his second offense since Chan Gailey replaced Chad O’Shea as Miami’s offensive coordinator, and is building the Dolphins an offense in his vision.

“He has to learn the terminology and the depth of some routes. Things of that nature. They are a little different than they were a year ago,” Flores continued. “That’s kind what his focus is right now.”

Fortunately for Williams, Gailey’s offensive has some built in flexibility according to quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, who has served as a starter for six seasons where Gailey has either been an NFL head coach or offensive coordinator.

“Guys love playing for him because one of the biggest things with him is he wants you to be yourself,” Fitzpatrick said last week when asked about Gailey and his offense, which he’s played for and in with the Buffalo Bills and New York Jets. “I’ll never forget, Stevie Johnson in Buffalo was a guy that didn’t really play a whole lot and as soon as he got with Chan and Chan gave him the freedom to be creative on some of his routes and do some things that were a little unorthodox, it really catapulted his career.

“Players love playing for [Gailey] because he gives them freedom – a certain amount of freedom, not a whole lot – and he’s a guy that does care about the details but he really cares about the end result, not necessarily how you got there.”

That approach could help ease the learning curve Williams might have.

But it could also help his competition push their way into a starting spot opposite DeVante Parker, who is coming off his first 1,000-yard season, and is expected to remain the focal point of Miami’s passing game if he’s healthy.

Allen Hurns, Albert Wilson and Jakeem Grant are the veterans on this unit, the players who along with Williams might push for one of the three starting roles at receiver.

And Gary Jennings, Mack Hollins, Isaiah Ford and rookies Kirk Merritt and Matt Cole will likely have a reasonable shot too. Especially if they excel in practices like Williams did last season, which allowed him to quickly transition from camp-body to a rookie starter in the span of a month last training camp.

Williams got there because of his rare blend of size, speed and athleticism.

Only time will tell if his surgically repaired left knee will allow him to resemble that player in 2020.

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