Cameron Wake and Ryan Tannehill are important pieces to the future

Written by Matthew Cannata | Twitter: @PhinManiacs
Cameron Wake might be getting older but he is still one of the best and most dominant defensive ends in the entire NFL. On the flip side, Ryan Tannehill is only in his third year and has plenty of road ahead of him. However, both are important to the long-term success of the Miami Dolphins.

Although Wake has proven that he can still continue to be elite, he never gets content, knowing that the NFL is a business and things can change in the blink of an eye.

“Have you been watching the locker room? I’ve never gotten to that point. People laugh at me, but, every time I come to training camp, I look at it like I have to make this team, and that was no different this past offseason where I’m like, ‘Hey, I’ve got to train. I’ve got to make sure I’m ready and pass my conditioning test. I don’t look at it any differently than every week. This is a one-week league, you guys know just as well as anybody. It’s always what have you done for me lately. It doesn’t matter if you had 25 sacks or 30 tackles this week. It’s ‘What are you going to do this week?’ That’s why every week you have to come with that same hunger, that same passion to produce.”

Tannehill has just started to prove that he is capable of being a franchise quarterback and has done so in the all-important third year barometer for NFL quarterbacks. Although Tannehill won't say whether or not he thinks he deserves to be here in the long-term, he knows he has improved and said he needs to just continue to work hard.

“I don’t really think about that. I think I need to get better and I need to make plays. I want to be here for a long time. Obviously, I understand, in order to do that, you have to play well. So that all goes into it. But at the end of the day, I just want to win. I want to take this team to the playoffs and go from there.”   

It will be important to keep these two players around for the future as the Dolphins are just a few pieces away from being a legitimate powerhouse in the NFL. 

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