Dolphins 28, Texans 3
Q. What do you think changed in your second game?
SKYLAR THOMPSON: You know, just not living in the past. I think the best thing for me in my mindset is like when adversity hits, which obviously like the first preseason game didn't go how I would want it to go, that's when I just tried to get stronger and not let it affect my confidence, affect my belief in myself.
That's all I did today. Just when I stepped out there, I just had belief and confidence in myself that this is a new game, new opportunity, and a new chance for me to just play the game that I love and just try to make it simple and have fun out there, and it definitely worked in my favor today.
Q. Did you know that outside of the couple snaps that you had to take off that you were going to play almost the entire game after Tua?
SKYLAR THOMPSON: Yeah, I knew I was going to play after Tua. I didn't quite know what the situation was going to look like.
Once Mike went through the same deal that I did, so they just informed me that I was playing the rest of the game, so I was excited to get more opportunities there.
Q. Did you get any explanation as to why it was the rest of the game instead of Mike White also getting some snaps when you were out?
SKYLAR THOMPSON: Yeah, I don't know what took place with Mike. I was just told that I was playing the rest of the game and that I was going to finish it out.
I have yet to know what exactly happened. That's just what the coaches told me at the time, and that's what I did.
Q. Where do you think you've grown the most up until now?
SKYLAR THOMPSON: Yeah, I just think just the language of our system, as to I kind of showed you guys earlier in the week, it is a complex system that we do a lot of shift trade motion, do a lot of stuff that affects the defense, and last year I was really just like very vanilla on the system as far as executing it and getting guys in the right spot, have this motion, have this motion, but now I feel like I'm getting better at being able to understand why we're motioning, why we're doing the things that we're doing, to kind of give me indicators of what the defense is doing.
It just allows my process pre-snap to have an idea of what's going to play out after the snap. That's the most important thing as a quarterback is to have a plan, and being able to predict what you think the defense is doing but also being able to react, but just having an idea pre-snap that allows me to play faster and play with confidence, and I think that's helped me going into year two here.
Q. Being around Tua all the time, you probably have a sense of what it means to him to return to the field after 237 days. What's your sense of that?
SKYLAR THOMPSON: Yeah. I mean, I was happy for him. Tua is a guy that is full of joy. That's the best way to describe him. He's always upbeat, always positive, always has a smile on his face, and you can tell he loves the game of football.
Just like last week, like you can tell he was frustrated he didn't get to play. He's a competitor. So when he got that opportunity to get back out there and get back on the field, I know that was big for him. Everybody in our locker room, everybody in this organization supports him and was excited for him.
You could tell he was happy to get back out there and get in the swing of things and get back in the routine of playing ball.
Q. I saw him yelling at you to change the play. What exactly did he want to change?
SKYLAR THOMPSON: It's just an inside joke. We ran this play that we scored on against the Texans in practice, and Mike just made a joke because Tua had that play. Just to read it out, it was just an inside joke, and happened to throw a touchdown on it. It was Tua just being Tua, just having fun.
Q. Which touchdown was that?
SKYLAR THOMPSON: It was the first one to Saubert.
Q. Can you take us through the other ones?
SKYLAR THOMPSON: Yeah. That was just a backside route there that he's really a place holder trying to hold the safety there so we could hit what we were trying to hit on the front side. The front side was covered, so I just kind of took a step back and just -- just playing football. I stepped back there. On paper there the ball was supposed to hardly ever going to go there, but as I retreated back to buy myself some time, I felt him make a great play, scramble drill type of thing, cut loose, and made a good play there.
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FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports