MIAMI — Maybe he’s being humble, secretive or flat-out wants the world to stay out his business, but Rodney McGraw claims he can’t remember exactly who broke the news to the defensive end that he’d been signed to an NFL team’s 53-man roster.

A couple of days after the Miami Dolphins called the undrafted rookie up from the practice squad, making him the first rookie on the practice squad to be elevated to the active roster, McGraw spent a minute or two struggling to recall the individual who told him about his promotion.

“My head is spinning right now from practice,” McGraw said last Friday. “I’m a little foggy.”

McGraw downplayed his promotion as business, “the regular process,” but what he had done was so much more.

He has achieved a lifelong dream, giving himself the potential to change his life forever. And more importantly, this 24-year-old became the first player rewarded by this Dolphins regime for being a culture fit.

And I would argue that even more than Miami’s 2026 draftees, McGraw personifies what general manager Jon-Eric Sullivan and head coach Jeff Hafley are trying to find and build around because he wasn’t given anything. He got it out the mud.

“I’m a rookie,” said McGraw, who has produced seven tackles in the 33 defensive snaps he has played the past three games. “I don’t even know anything.”

And that’s the beauty of the 2026 Dolphins, which just won their first game of the season last week against the New York Jets. This team is so green, so inexperienced, so pure that it has no idea what’s possible. Nor what isn’t.

Their naivety makes them refreshing.

“I’m just thankful to be here and will do whatever I need to do to stay,” McGraw said. “I’m not too high, or too low. I got to work. If I was the janitor, the cook, the dude in here changing the light bulbs, it’s a blessing to be in this building.”

That’s how you create an investment, loyalty, drive and possibly build a healthy culture.

A team filled with that mind-set, and not the mind-set of divas, mercenaries or grizzled and sometimes bitter or selfish veterans, might be how you transform a franchise that if we’re going to be honest — and we need to — has had the worst culture in the NFL.

And maybe the worst culture in professional spots considering what this franchise once was before 2000, to what it is now, riding a 26-year streak of not winning a single playoff game.

I would struggle to count what number rebuild this is for Miami, and most of them have had a similar theme. But this one, the Green Bay South era, is different because of the Rodney McGraws (the nobodies striving to become someone), the Michael Taaffe’s (the underdogs who got their chance), the JuJu Brents (the talents few believed in anymore) and the Ollie Gordon II (the future superstars who seized opportunity).

“You got to believe in yourself, no matter who doubts you,” said McGraw, who sparingly made a play during training camp and the preseason, but fortunately made it to Miami’s practice squad.

“To be an undrafted guy and come in and just put your head down and work and learn and just embrace the way we’re going to play defense,” Dolphins defensive coordinator Sean Duggan said of McGraw. “A ton of credit goes to him. [He has] the right mindset, which is huge for us, the desire to play the game a certain way.”

Under the tutelage of defensive line coach Austin Clarke, who has been known to polish up a project player or three during his seventh-year coaching tenure with the Dolphins, McGraw made steady progress while helping the Dolphins offense get prepared for each week’s opponents.

“I didn’t know much about him when he got here. He’d been to a bunch of different schools,” coach Jeff Hafley said of McGraw’s college stints at Penn State, Louisville and Western Michigan. “We watched a little of his tape and you see this big strong guy hitting the bag … We had some conversations [about] this guy’s got a lot in his body. He just hadn’t played a lot.”

McGraw started becoming so impactful the Dolphins were motivated to try him out in the games, and when he shined in spurts, they pressed their foot on the gas.

What does this all mean? Is McGraw destined to become the next Jesse Davis, or Nik Needham, the last two Dolphins players elevated from the practice squad to became multiseason starters for the franchise? Nobody knows yet.

But his daily work, habits, and personality will certainly provide him a chance.

“You can do anything you want to do if you put your mind to it,” McGraw said. “It might come with trails and tribulations, ups and downs. But if you just keep pursuing, keep pushing the light in the tunnel will eventually open.”

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