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Wilfredo Lee/Associated Press

Dolphins fans were surprised when the team used a second-round pick on Oklahoma defensive tackle Jordan Phillips back in May.

If there was any area Miami was set at, it was in the interior defensive line. They already had Earl Mitchell and Ndamukong Suh, and they had depth behind the two players, with Anthony Johnson and A.J. Francis backing them up.

But Phillips was drafted with an eye toward the future, and Suh will be guiding him along himself.

The relationship didn't start in training camp, but a while before, when Suh invited Phillips out to Oregon to train with him (per Hal Habib of the Palm Beach Post).

Phillips accepted, and what followed was surprise at first, with Phillips saying: “I just didn’t feel like a big vet like that would be, you know, as open to helping a young guy like me. But he took on the role and put me under his wing.”

What did Phillips take from working with Suh? As Phillips puts it: “Just how hard he works. I’ve never seen anybody work the way he does.”

The coaches and executives wanted to see this kind of mentoring from the team's veterans, as Suh points out:

Mike Tannenbaum definitely challenged me and it is a challenge that I always accept no matter what. As I have grown up and understood in the league, being hopefully one of the elite guys, to be good and to be great as I want to be, you have to go out there and help the guys around you, especially younger guys.

Meanwhile head coach Joe Philbin liked seeing Suh take Phillips under his wing as well, telling the Associated Press (per Fox Sports):

That's an example of leadership—taking a young player, showing him obviously from a physical standpoint and a professionalism standpoint, a preparation standpoint, some of the things that he's done to get himself ready. Now, to take a young player under his wing so to speak and do those things, that's one great example that he's done already in the short time he's been here.

Suh's display of leadership shouldn't come as too much of a surprise to the fans, at least not as much of a surprise as it was to Phillips when he received the invitation. Two years ago in Detroit, Suh took the Lions' first-round pick defensive end Ziggy Ansah under his wing during training camp, with Ansah telling Justin Rogers of MLive.com about his apprenticeship:

Yeah, definitely, he's a really great guy. He leads me on the field, tells me what I do right. Off the field, he said if I need anything, I should just hit him up and he's going to help me out. He's been a big brother to me. When I do something wrong, he's like, "You've got to do it this way." He's just helped me overall.

In the two seasons since then, Ansah has started 28 games, recording 15.5 sacks 81 tackles and five forced fumbles.

Phillips, unlike Ansah, is a defensive tackle, so you won't see the numbers Ansah has put up. What you will see from this partnership is a better understanding of the game from Phillips, a player with plenty of upside who had a reputation for laziness at Oklahoma. That reputation hasn't popped up in Miami yet, and as long as he's working with Suh, there's a good chance it won't.