There will be no lack of Miami Dolphins personalities in 2023. The latest addition to an already fascinating roster: Eli Apple, who reportedly agreed to terms with the team the day after the club learned it would be without Jalen Ramsey for at least the next four months.
What this means: Eli Apple and Tyreek Hill — who had a very public beef when Apple was with the Cincinnati Bengals, and Hill was with the Kansas City Chiefs — will share a locker room.
Eli Apple and Tyreek Hill Are Now Miami Dolphins Teammates
“🥹 Monday practice gone be fun,” Hill wrote on Twitter after the news broke.
The feud shouldn’t really reflect poorly on Hill. A lot of people around the league have had a problem with Apple since he entered the league as a first-round pick in 2016.
He didn’t have many allies when he played for the Giants — Landon Collins went so far as to call Apple “a cancer” — and his tendency to rub people the wrong way followed him when he left Gotham.
But it wasn’t until he landed in Cincinnati that he really seemed to embrace the role of a villain. In recent years, he ripped both the Giants and Saints fan bases and taunted Chiefs receivers Hill and Mecole Hardman after the Bengals beat Kansas City in the 2021-2022 AFC Championship Game.
Now that Hill and Apple are both in Miami, it’ll be interesting to see if any bad blood remains.
Apple would be wise to keep things as civil as possible.
This is Hill’s team. Apple is just a guest.
He might not even be in the league if not for Ramsey’s injury. Apple has been a free agent since his contract expired in March, and it took a major injury to one of the league’s best players to get him back on a roster.
There is talent there, however. Apple, in his first seven seasons, started all but 10 of the 88 games in which he appeared. He’s had stretches in which he’s been really good and stretches in which he has been exposed.
The soon-to-be-28-year-old has just five interceptions in his career, but in his previous two seasons — both spent with Cincinnati — Apple allowed completions on just 58.6% of passes thrown his way.
Despite his experience, don’t expect Apple to be gifted a starting job.
In fact, Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel suggested Friday that any of the players the Dolphins tried out after Ramsey’s injury — a list that reportedly included Fabian Moreau and Anthony Averett — would be added as an insurance policy.
“I’m very happy with our group,” McDaniel said. “We’ll have a workout for depth purposes here in the near future.”
That group, as of Friday, included Xavien Howard, Kader Kohou, Noah Igbinoghene, Cam Smith, Trill Williams, and Keion Crossen.
It now includes Apple as well.