Before Week 14, Dolphins running back Brandon Bolden had one carry in his first year with the Dolphins. Before Week 13, he had none.
While Bolden still has a long way to go to become a regular contributor for the Miami offense, he made the most of his two carries on Sunday against his former team, turning them into 60 yards and two touchdowns.
“We’ve lost all of those other guys, whether it’s Jakeem [Grant] or Albert [Wilson],” coach Adam Gase said while explaining the increase in Bolden’s chances to reporters on Monday. “Brandon has a very wide skill set. He can do things out wide, in the backfield. His pass protection, he’s a really good pass protector. He can do all three phases of the game. We started doing it. . . . It’s probably my fault that we haven’t done it sooner. We started doing it last week against Buffalo. That was just kind of the starting point for us. Really, we just got to the rest of his plays and now we can start over and try to build some more off of it.”
While Bolden primarily was signed to play special teams, Gase knew Bolden could contribute on offense.
“I think Brandon was probably an unexpected opportunity,” Gase said of the process that brought Bolden to Miami. “Mike [Tannenbaun] did a good job of working with his agent to get it done. I know I was talking to Brandon quite a bit during that time just to explain to him kind of what our situation was and what we were looking for and how I thought he could impact our team. And obviously him and Danny [Amendola] are very close. Danny was a big help with that as far as talking to me about how much he could help us, what he could do for the locker room and on the field. He even said at the time, ‘He’s a really good running back, just he hasn’t played that spot in a while.’”
Bolden has earned the opportunity to play a lot more running back as the Dolphins make a playoff run that seemed highly unlikely nine days ago.
