Chris Perkins: Here's how video on social media might have caused Dolphins coach Jeff Hafley to lose a game

Chris Perkins, South Florida Sun-Sentinel on Sep 4, 2026

Published in Football

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MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Dolphins fans who publish training camp videos of their team might be helping the opponent and putting the Dolphins at a strategic disadvantage. So, don’t do it.

Well, that was the message that I gleaned from Dolphins coach Jeff Hafley on Thursday when I asked about his level of coaching paranoia and whether it intensifies from training camp and regular season.

I’ve always maintained that football coaches are over-the-top paranoid about fan videos or injury information that is released publicly. But Hafley related a sobering anecdote about fan video that legitimizes the concerns. He called the episode “disappointing.”

Hafley, the former Green Bay defensive coordinator, said he recently learned from newly hired Dolphins passing game coordinator Kevin Patullo, a former Philadelphia coach, that the Eagles found out about the Packers’ pass-pressure packages as a result of training camp videos that Green Bay fans put on social media. The Eagles used that information to help defeat the Packers, 34-29.

“I didn’t really think about it as much until we hired Kevin Patullo,” Hafley said of fan video, “and he told me that before we played them in Brazil he had half my pressures on tape from training camp from people that videoed it and put it online, Twitter, etc …

“And then I remember we had a pressure that I had never run, so there’s no way he could have known about it. And they knew it was coming, and he said that they saw that pressure on video.”

Coach paranoia goes beyond fan video, though.

Not long ago an ex-Dolphins defensive coach stopped a Dolphins employee in a hallway and asked them to get video from an opponent’s TV interview. It turns out there was a handoff in the background of the video that could have offered some insight that would help Miami win on Sunday.

Paranoia runs deep.

Most NFL teams monitor what opponents post on social media in an effort to gain a modicum of information that helps them get an advantage. They also monitor what fans and media post.

Every little bit of information helps.

Ex-Dolphins coach Jimmy Johnson, who coached Dallas to two Super Bowl wins, tells the tale of how he was sitting in his Los Angeles hotel room the week of the Super Bowl in 1993 and got a video tip about a Buffalo Bills shovel pass play while watching a local news broadcast.

Johnson alerted defensive coordinator Butch Davis about the play. Dallas prepared for the play and that preparation helped them win that Super Bowl at the Rose Bowl because the Cowboys forced a fumble as a result of that video knowledge.

By the way, paranoia isn’t only limited to coaches.

Newly acquired quarterback Kyle McCord said players have been known to engage in skullduggery due to paranoia.

“I’ve been in locker rooms where dudes will purposely say something that, try to throw the other team off, whether it’s relating to scheme or guys playing or whatever,” he said. “So I think you’ve got to take everything that you see online about who you’re playing with a grain of salt.”

That might be wise. But there’s a school of thought that says all information helps.

Teams monitor their opponent’s midweek injury information because it could prevent them from wasting time preparing for an injured player.

“If we have a player going into a game that we feel like we need to double in the red zone or double on third down or run a certain coverage for the guy and we’re practicing it all week, and we’re not sure if he’s gonna play and they tell us on Wednesday he’s not going to play, then I don’t have to put anything in,” Hafley said.

“But if we don’t know, I still have to work it and then I have to have a backup plan.”

There’s a limit to how helpful midweek injury information can be to a team.

“I’m not sure if we’ve ever won a game on a Sunday because of midweek information,” Hafley said.

But we know he might have lost a game due to training camp videos posted by fans.