Entering the 2023 season, the Miami Dolphins made a change to their coaching staff, replacing Matt Applebaum with Butch Barry after just one season.
The Dolphins are no strangers to shuffling offensive line coaches, as they’ve had seven since the start of the 2016 season.
Barry has experience working with Mike McDaniel, as the two worked together in 2021 in San Francisco.
He’ll be tasked with figuring out the two spots that aren’t currently manned by Terron Armstead, Connor Williams or Robert Hunt. Left guard and right tackle have been sore spots for the Dolphins in recent years, and last year, Liam Eichenberg and Austin Jackson were given those jobs out of camp.
Both dealt with injuries in 2022, with Jackson playing in just two games. While they’ve only been working together for a short time, Barry is already liking what he’s seen from Jackson this offseason.
“He’s been awesome to work with,” Barry said (transcribed by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel). “He really has. He’s been very intentional in everything that we try to do. He’s taking the approach, the process, the standard that we’re trying to go about it and he’s embraced it.
“And look, it’s not going to be perfect. No player plays the perfect game. No player has the perfect practice. But he has intentionality in everything he’s trying to do. And he comes with an emphasis every day. Every day, he has an emphasis on what he wants to get better at, and as a coach that’s all you can ever ask for.”
Jackson has to really show that talent that got him drafted in the first round of the 2020 draft if he wants to earn that starting job again in 2023. He’ll have competition for the role, as Miami signed two former first-round selections in Isaiah Wynn and Cedric Ogbuehi to at least push Jackson if not take the job from him completely.
At least he’s showing the effort now, but he’ll need more than that to be protecting Tua Tagovailoa’s blind side against the Los Angeles Chargers in Week 1.
