Thomas Moves Up

From all appearances, Donald Thomas' comeback from his offseason injury is now complete. The second-year guard has been lining up with the first-team offense this week instead of splitting reps with fellow second-year player Shawn Murphy.

Thomas and Murphy rotated series in Monday night's preseason opener against Jacksonville, but we would expect that it will be Thomas playing the entire time with the other four starters — Jake Long, Justin Smiley, Jake Grove and Vernon Carey — against Carolina on Saturday.

It really was only a matter of time before Thomas took over before he's clearly the best option for the Dolphins at right guard. What the Dolphins accomplished by taking it slow before putting Thomas in there on a full-time basis was give him more time to recover from his offseason pectoral injury as well as give Murphy the opportunity to line up against the first-team defense and alongside the first-team offense to get better quality reps.

But all along it was going to be Thomas as the starter unless he wasn't able to go physically. It now appears that that's no longer a concern.