How Patriots Are Prepping For Uncertainty Vs. Tyreek Hill, Dolphins

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Facing Tyreek Hill is challenging under any circumstances. He’s one of the NFL’s best wide receivers, and few in the league possess his game-breaking speed.

But facing Hill on a new team, in a new offensive scheme run by a first-year head coach? That adds a whole other layer of uncertainty.

Hill was traded from the Kansas City Chiefs — with whom he teamed up with Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce to form one of the league’s most explosive offenses — to the Miami Dolphins this offseason. His Dolphins debut will come this Sunday against the New England Patriots at Hard Rock Stadium.

That game also will be the Miami debut for new head coach Mike McDaniels, who last served as Kyle Shanahan’s offensive coordinator with the San Francisco 49ers.

The Patriots have spent the last two weeks trying to decipher how McDaniel will deploy the likes of Hill, Jaylen Waddle, Cedrick Wilson and Mike Gesicki — the Dolphins’ strong stable of pass-catchers for polarizing third-year quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. But with Hill playing just three snaps in the preseason, Waddle not playing at all and McDaniels surely not wanting to reveal much of his offense before the real games begin, tendencies have been hard to pin down.

“I would say this is pretty unique because now we’re going against a guy in a whole new offense,” Patriots safety Devin McCourty said before Thursday’s practice. “So it’s not as easy as throwing up the Kansas City film and saying, ‘Let’s do something similar to what we did before.’ I think it’s going to be different. We’ve been trying to blend the preseason games with what San Fran did and trying to say, ‘This guy could be in this role.’ But it’s hard to really tell, and that’s what’s hard about Week 1 games. New offense, new players over there.

“Not just Tyreek Hill, but Cedrick Wilson in the slot or outside. We don’t know how that’s all going to mix. We haven’t seen all those guys out there through the preseason. It’s going to be a lot of adjusting and figuring out, and hopefully we can have some success against not just Tyreek Hill but the whole offense.”

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The Patriots faced San Francisco in 2020, when McDaniel was the 49ers’ run-game coordinator. McCourty said the film from that game — in which a shorthanded Niners team ran for 197 yards and rolled to a 33-6 win — is “definitely” beneficial this week. But only to a point.

“There’s scheme stuff,” he said. “But again, we don’t know how they’re going to do that. Like, Deebo Samuel is a very unique player. Who is Deebo Samuel in (Miami’s) offense? We don’t know. Who’s going to be the speed guy? Are they going to do more vertical things? I think that’s the thing. But we definitely know some of the move-the-pocket things, some of the things the San Francisco offense liked — I’m sure we’ll see some of that stuff. I don’t know what Mike McDaniel might not have liked that they did in San Francisco that we might not see here in Miami. So we’ll have to kind of figure that out as we go.”

(For what it’s worth, when the Dolphins acquired Hill, McDaniels said there was “probably going to be some overlap” between his usage and the way the Niners used Samuel, their All-Pro receiver/running back.)

Hill had two monster games against the Patriots early in his career (7-133-1 in 2017; 7-142-3 in 2018) but has been held in relative check in his last three matchups with New England. He had one catch for 42 yards in the Patriots’ win at Arrowhead Stadium in the 2018 AFC Championship Game, then finished with fewer than 65 receiving yards in the two most recent Pats-Chiefs meetings.

In explaining how the Patriots will combat Hill’s rare speed, McCourty mentioned Jonathan Jones, who stuck with Hill in 2019 and 2020. Jones, one of the Patriots’ fastest players, took on a new role this summer, replacing the departed J.C. Jackson as a starting outside cornerback after playing most of his career in the slot.

“I would say Jon Jones doesn’t get a lot of credit on our team over the last few years with J.C. and Steph (Stephon Gilmore),” McCourty said. “He’s been a key part of our success, and I think his ability physically to run with Tyreek Hill as much as anybody can run with him and go out there and compete against him, I think you pair that together with the game plans that we’ve had, (it) has been pretty good.”