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One of the first decisions Doug Marrone made when he was officially hired to replace Gus Bradley as the coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars was to remove the ping pong table that’d had a home inside the team’s locker room since the Jack Del Rio Era in an attempt to minimize the distractions.
Now, there’s no way to know how things would’ve looked if players had easy access to that particular pastime during Marrone’s stint with the Jags, but it’s hard to imagine it would’ve had much of an impact on the 23-43 record the skipper posted before being replaced by Urban Meyer (who was subsequently replaced by Doug Pederson, who allowed the table to make its grand return last month).
Now, there’s another NFL team in Florida that’s opted to conduct a similar experiment in the hopes they’ll get a different result.
The Dolphins revealed they decided to remove ping pong tables from their locker room to get players to focus on football and were subsequently roasted by plenty of NFL fans
The Miami Dolphins—who have appeared in a single playoff game over the course of the previous decade—came into the season hoping new head coach Mike McDaniel and an increasingly talented Tua Tagovailoa could be the key to finally turning things around.
It looked like that might be the case after the Dolphins opened up the year by winning their first three games. Unfortunately, they’ve run into some issues after seeing their franchise QB repeatedly concussed in the span of five days and dropping their last two games—including a 40-17 thrashing at the hands of the Jets.
Now, the team has taken a page out of the Jaguars’ playbook, as its players have apparently opted to remove ping pong tables from the locker room to try to reduce distractions and shift the focus to the game they’re paid to play.
McDaniel said Tyreek Hill and the rest of the team captains decided to take the Dolphins' ping pong table out of the locker room — in an effort to focus more intently on their upcoming opponent
— Marcel Louis-Jacques (@Marcel_LJ)
There’s always a chance this could retroactively be viewed as a crucial move that marked the beginning of a major turning point, but based on how many fans reacted to the news, the odds of that actually happening seem fairly slim.
Some people placed the blame on the Jets for forcing the move in question.
If you remove the ping pong tables, the Dolphins would've only given up 175 yards to Breece Hall instead of 197. https://t.co/8GvObgkB3U
— Zack Rosenblatt (@ZackBlatt)
Yo the Jets beat the fucking ping pong tables out of the Dolphins
https://t.co/EyYubFftwm
— NYSF Magazine (@NYSFmag)
The jets made Antonio Brown quit mid-game. The jets forced the dolphins to remove the ping pong table from the locker room. There’s nothing this team can’t achieve. I believe
https://t.co/lNfIYzLM6P
— Sheesh! (@Kadoy13251435)
Others used the news as a chance to mock the team for the poor optics surrounding Tagovailoa’s aforementioned health issues.
I cannot believe the Dolphins had a ping pong table in charge of enforcing their concussion protocols. https://t.co/KSukCiLoIP
— Laura Albanese (@AlbaneseLaura)
The #Dolphins applied a more thorough analysis to removing ping pong tables from their locker room than removing a concussed player from the football field.
— Hänsel (@UberHansen)
That explains it. It wasn’t Tua’s clear and obvious back injury that got him a concussion. It was the ping pong. https://t.co/bhSL2dCogq
— TB Times Subcriber
(@Patskrieg)
They had to know this was coming.
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