Miami Dolphins Roasted For Removing Ping Pong Tables From Locker Room To Try And Turn Things Around

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.

UPDATE: On Thursday, Tyreek Hill clarified the table had actually been removed to make room for a new, custom table after the old one was bent in a tournament between players. 

The fact that Hill drew praise from McDaniel for what appears to be a virtually meaningless gesture is arguably funnier than any of the reactions the news initially spawned. With that said, you can keep reading to see what some of them were as we return to our previously published article. 

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.

Others used the news as a chance to mock the team for the poor optics surrounding Tagovailoa’s aforementioned health issues.

They had to know this was coming.