Torbor Brings Something Super To Miami

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http://www.miamidolphins.com/newsite/news/top_story.asp?contentID=5867

Torbor Brings Something Super To Miami

June 23, 2008
   
By Andy Kent
Special for MiamiDolphins.com

Whenever a player from the most recent Super Bowl champion switches uniforms it can impact his new team in two ways, by either bringing resentment or inspiration to the locker room and practice field. Dolphins fifth-year linebacker Reggie Torbor is in the midst of dealing with those two possibilities after helping lead the New York Giants to a stunning upset of the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII.

Torbor, 27, was signed by Miami as an unrestricted free agent on March 1st, less than a month after celebrating with the Vince Lombardi Trophy in Arizona. He was going from the top of the mountain to a team that finished 1-15 in 2007 but had totally revamped its front office and coaching staff. He was well aware of the aggressive off-season moves made by the Dolphins and was attracted to the new regime.

When Torbor arrived in South Florida he found himself going to work for first-year Head Coach Tony Sparano and Executive Vice President of Football Operations Bill Parcells, men he had called rivals when they were with the Dallas Cowboys in the NFC East. But these also were men who promoted the same type of attitude that Giants Head Coach and Parcells disciple Tom Coughlin did.

"This is the environment that I like to be in, and when I say this environment, I mean whether it's tough or whatever you want to call it, strict, when you walk in the door you know what's expected of you," said Torbor, who started the last nine games, including all four playoff games, for the Giants last year and totaled 148 tackles (109 solo) and five sacks in his four years in New York.

"The knock on Coughlin's was the five-minute early thing. Everybody knows about how Coughlin wanted you (at team meetings) five minutes early, but you knew you were supposed to be there five minutes early, and if you were late it was your fault. Whether you were a walk-on or you were Michael Strahan, you were going to get fined. So if you didn't break the rules you didn't have a problem, and I loved playing for him."

Torbor was selected by the Giants with the first pick in the fourth round of the 2004 NFL Draft out of Auburn University, where he was a teammate of Dolphins running back Ronnie Brown. He also got to face the alma mater of fellow Dolphins linebacker Channing Crowder, the University of Florida, every year in college, and now Crowder is happy to call Torbor his teammate.

As far as how last year's Super Bowl win can impact this year's Miami team according to the always vocal Crowder?

“A lot of bragging, that's all it brings is bragging,” Crowder joked. “No, he knows what to do to get there, and with them beating the Patriots, he was telling us about that with the Patriots being in our division and all and them beating us something like five out of the last six times or whatever it is. So he's bringing us that, you know how they did it and what they did.”

Even though Torbor is learning an entirely new defense and having to erase from his mind everything he was taught with the Giants that led to a championship, he is also well aware of how successful this system was in Dallas. Of course, his Giants solved that same Cowboys defense in the NFC Divisional playoffs and then went on to beat Green Bay in the NFC Championship en route to becoming just the fifth Wild Card team to win a Super Bowl and the third to win three playoff games in order to do it.

Torbor acknowledged that he has been asked quite a bit by players like Crowder and some of the other returning veterans about what it took to not only beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl, but to nearly beat them in the regular-season finale (a 38-35 loss).

"You just get after to get after them," Torbor said. "It's simple, we just hit them. I think they hadn't been hit and Brady hadn't been hit, and if you put him in the position here he's on his back, I don't know a quarterback that can complete a pass from his back."

To reach the pinnacle of professional football in just his fourth NFL season has not been lost on Torbor, but he also has become that much more motivated to experience that feeling again and again, which is why he is hoping to bring that same winning atmosphere back to Miami.

"There's nothing like (winning the Super Bowl), and I hate to sound like a cliché," Torbor said. "It was such a high and you were so happy you just started to cry and see other grown men hugging and crying. It just made you realize you had done something that you wanted to since you were in the backyard as a 5- or 6-year-old. And I think coming here I can bring that winning formula because I've seen it and I've been to the mountaintop so to speak and I know what it took to get there.

"There were just little things like going out and having some wings after practice. It may sound like it has nothing to do with football but it helps, because there is going to come a point where something is going to go wrong and you've got to be able to trust the guy beside you because you've been through the good and you've been through the bad together. We're just trying to put all those pieces together right now."

Torbor is one of the new pieces brought in either through free agency or via trade to shore up the linebacking corps and compliment Crowder and 10th-year veteran Joey Porter. Akin Ayodele, who was acquired from Dallas, and Charlie Anderson, an unrestricted free agent who played for the Houston Texans in 2007, also are expected to contribute, but Torbor is the only one capable of flashing a Super Bowl ring in the huddle.