Deshon Elliott may not look at his time in Miami very fondly.
Now with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Elliott joined Marlon Humphrey’s Punch Line Podcast to preview their upcoming AFC North matchup — and do the opposite of wax poetic about Mike McDaniel‘s culture in South Beach.
“I haven’t been able to play against Baltimore the way I’ve wanted to,” Elliott said of the upcoming Week 11 matchup versus the Ravens. “Because last year, I played for a team that was soft as f*ck. Oh my god, I can’t say that on here. I mean, that was pretty soft. The guys on the team — I mean, there were some guys who were tough, but the majority of the team, there was not mentally tough individuals.
“So, to be on a team with a full team of mentally tough guys going against another mentally tough team, AFC North ball, you know, it’s going to be fun, man. It’s gonna be fun.”
The fun stopped when the comments got back to the Dolphins’ third-year head coach.
McDaniel hemmed and hawed for about seven seconds before saying he was “supremely only concerned with the 2024 Dolphins, for sure.”
“And I think that every team’s ability to be mentally tough in the NFL season is definitely tried,” he continued. “And I think, case in point, some of the stuff we’ve been going through, I think our team played a tough-fought game the last three weeks and ended up finding a way to win this past week. I think that’s not the easiest thing to do. Just worried about this year’s team.
“Cool, you said it on a podcast. Cool podcast.”
McDaniel wasn’t the only one to weigh in on Elliott’s ‘cool’ podcast comments.
“I heard he made the comments,” Dolphins safety Jevon Holland said via Joe Schaad of the Palm Beach Post. “I saw the clip. Honestly, man, if you want to call somebody out, go ahead and do that and drop names… If you’re not naming names, the rest is empty.”
Jevon Holland on DeShon Elliott: I heard he made the comments. I saw the clip. Honestly, man, if you want to call somebody out, go ahead and do that and drop names… If you’re not naming names, the rest of it is empty.
It’ll remain empty as the Dolphins likely won’t play the Steelers again until 2026. And who knows where Elliott, who’s now on his fourth team since entering the league in 2018, will be by then?
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.