08-10-2007, 10:05 AM
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#1 (permalink)
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Both of them
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 10,225
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Dolphins' Alabi a nice addition to the line
Dolphins' Alabi a nice addition to the line - 08/09/2007 - MiamiHerald.com
Quote:
Anthony Alabi is a nice guy.
A platinum card of credibility with parents, a $2 bill on the bruising fields of the college dating scene and an NFL line of scrimmage.
Alabi knows his rep tags him as a nice guy. College dating is in his past -- Alabi has been out of college since 2005 with a degree in criminal justice from Texas Christian and, besides, he has a fiancée, Carolina Pizarro.
Now, if he didn't pay the rent by committing controlled violence as an offensive tackle, nobody would say anything less than complimentary about Alabi being a nice guy on the job.
''Out of college and coming into the NFL, that was one of the things that they always want to talk about,'' Alabi said. ``I was raised to be respectful. I was raised to be a polite person. Off the field, I'm going to be respectful. I'm going to talk to you as a man. That's the thing, I'm not going to come out here and act like an idiot or be stupid. But when it comes to game time, I'm going to do my job. That's the one thing you'll never have to question is I will do my job.''
AN AFTERTHOUGHT
His first two seasons after being a fifth-round 2005 draft pick, his job entailed being roster filler -- inactive for 18 games, dressed but not playing in eight and playing in the other six. These days, Alabi is first on the depth chart at right tackle, a spot he has received while coming back from right knee surgery in April and kept though a sore left knee held him out of practices Monday afternoon and Tuesday. He returned Wednesday afternoon.
It was the right knee that got Alabi in training camp a week earlier than the other non-quarterback veterans. To help get into ''football shape'' after being limited in his postsurgery workouts he reported during the pretraining camp rookie camp. He impressed the new coaching staff there and in the 12-minute written test on the offense the linemen take before training camp.
''The first thing we do before we step on the field is we give our offense a test, and he had the highest grade on the test,'' Dolphins coach Cam Cameron said. ``You guys know how I feel about the mental part of the game and a guy's ability to think. He got 100 percent on the test. There were some other guys too, but he had the highest score in the smallest time frame.''
JUST A LITTLE DIRTY
Just too nice, according to defensive lineman Vonnie Holliday, who extolled Alabi's physical abilities earlier this week. Defensive players prefer offensive linemen wearing the same colors to be nasty, irritating, and, linebacker Zach Thomas said earlier this week, ``a little dirty.''
In giving an example of being nasty and having enough of a bad attitude, Alabi said, ``If there's a run play, and we finish our blocks, sometimes we stay on a little longer just to finish it. It's more about defeating the person, not so much about just doing what is necessary. It's a personal battle between you and the person and sometimes it gets a little heated, a little emotional.
``It's not being dirty. It's being aggressive and being what you have to be in order to be at your position.''
Roommate and fellow offensive lineman Rex Hadnot opined, ``You can't be nice on the field and be successful. He's come in and done a great job. He's had a couple of injuries that have kept him from taking off, but I think he's done a good job.''
In fact, Hadnot said Alabi does show a mean streak off the field. It comes out when Hadnot turns on the television, though he gives Hadnot no arguments on programming. ''He doesn't watch TV at all. I don't understand that,'' Hadnot said.
So, he's a book guy?
``No, he's a surf-the-internet, sleep, talk-to-his-fiancée-all-night kind of guy.''
Nice guy.
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Dolphins' Alabi a nice addition to the line
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