Over the past three years, Brock Osweiler a/k/a Brock Lobster a/k/a Brocktober a/k/a Ock Brosweiler has received nearly as much undeserved criticism as undeserved money. (See, there’s another example of it.) Dolphins coach Adam Gase explained on Thursday the importance of Osweiler ignoring the negative things that are said and written.
“It’s keeping pollution out of his brain,” Gase told reporters. “That’s what it is. It’s not like you ever read anything positive, so why read it? In this profession, you just have to stay in the bunker, because if you start letting all that other stuff kind of get in your head, you start to believe it after a while.”
That said, it’s impossible not to realize that Osweiler has had struggles in 2016 and 2017, from a lost season in Houston to the failure to qualify for the 53-man roster on a franchise that lost every game it played to a return to Denver as the guy at the bottom of the depth chart. Gase believes those experiences have helped Osweiler get to where he now is.
“I think any time you go through any kind of adversity and you keep getting back up on the horse, it’s going to be a positive,” Gase said. “You’re going to get better. If you work at it hard enough, you’re going to get better. I think that’s what he’s really done. He did a good job of just focusing on what he had to do here of improving on the things that we asked him to improve on, supporting Ryan [Tannehill], trying to help him with what he knows about the offense that maybe he might not talk directly about, but he might tell him, ‘I went through this experience in it, here’s how I handled it’ behind closed doors that nobody else hears. I think he did a good job of that. He’s brought a lot of value and helped the skill guys as well.”
Osweiler has another important attribute, which has made it easy for Gase to give him the reins while Tannehill is injured.
“The command he has of the offense, what he knows how to get in and out of,” Gase said. “It will be subtle things, how he can help out those other guys, like little reminders every once in a while that might be something that he might have heard four or five years ago. Sometimes it helps. Maybe a guy will do a certain thing and that helps him get open. The more experience that you’re in something, some of those little nuggets you pick up along the way and you can possibly help another guy out.”
Osweiler helped out the Dolphins unexpectedly last week, beating the Bears. He’ll get a chance to do it again this week, against the Lions. If Osweiler can get to 2-0 for October, maybe the undeserved criticism will stop.
