He lined fields. He did laundry. Jeff Hafley took the hard road toward coaching the Miami Dolphins

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — Jeff Hafley was a football coach before he was a football coach.

The new coach of the Miami Dolphins played his college football at Siena, with home games before small crowds at what was a decaying minor-league baseball field in a suburb of Albany, New York. Hafley dealt with multiple injuries in those years but was eager to stay involved, so he helped coaches break down film and even was in the booth with them on many game days.

Little did he know he’d found his calling.

Those Siena teams weren’t very good. The program folded in 2003 for financial reasons. Even the field that the team called home has long since been demolished.

But the lessons that Hafley learned there — and other small schools at the start of his professional journey — still resonated within him on Thursday, when he was introduced as the new coach of the Dolphins.

“I learned what it’s like to hold people to an extreme level of accountability,” Hafley said of those early days. “I learned what toughness is about and I learned how to grind.”

He’ll have to grind again in Miami. The Dolphins are coming off a second consecutive losing season, going 7-10 this past season in the finale under former coach Mike McDaniel, have serious questions about who their quarterback will be in 2026 and haven’t won a playoff game since Hafley was still a student at Siena more than a quarter century ago.

“After interviewing, talking to people who were all really great candidates, I think the enthusiasm, the knowledge, the background, Jeff stood out amongst them all,” Dolphins owner Stephen Ross said. “So, we were really fortunate that he was available.”

Hafley was a lightly recruited quarterback from New Jersey who committed to Siena, converted to wide receiver and caught one pass in his senior year. The numbers meant nothing. The experiences meant everything.

His first college coach was Ed Zaloom, someone who continues to mentor Hafley today. Zaloom left Siena and went to Division III’s Worcester Polytechnic Institute, eventually giving Hafley a $2,500-a-year job there. Hafley lined the field. He did the laundry. He cleaned the helmets. He loved every second of it.

“What I learned was there’s no job too small,” Hafley said. “And that’s what you’re going to get from me every single day, because I learned how to work hard — like, really hard — and there’s no replacement for that. And there won’t be here.”

Zaloom then got Hafley a job at the University at Albany, under another upstate New York coaching legend in Bob Ford. Albany was a well-respected program, and Ford is still revered in that area for not just the wins but how he treated people.

As he did with Zaloom, Hafley listened to every word Ford offered.

“It laid down my foundation,” Hafley said of those years. “It taught me how to work hard, it taught me how to treat people, and it taught me how coach the game of football, the fundamentals, the technique. And it taught me there was no shortcuts. I wasn’t a guy who all of a sudden started coaching and I was sitting here in the NFL. I had to work, and I had really good role models to look to to do that. I would do it no other way.”

After about four years at Albany, Hafley took another job that paid barely anything at Pitt. For two years, Hafley slept on an air mattress under his desk. Turns out, it’s easy to be the first guy into the office for work every day when you’re actually living in the office.

Pitt would promote Hafley and he was on his way. He had college stints since at Rutgers and Ohio State, then a four-year run as head coach at Boston College. He was an assistant in the NFL with Tampa Bay, Cleveland and San Francisco, and comes to the Dolphins after a two-year run as Green Bay’s defensive coordinator.

The days of scratching out a living have long been over. But Hafley insists he’s still the same guy who lined fields and slept under his desk.

“What would I say to that guy now?” Hafley mused Thursday. “I’d say it worked.”

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