Salvon Ahmed is the latest RB to get a shot for Dolphins. Could he finally be the answer?

One night when Salvon Ahmed and Myles Gaskin were teammates with the Washington Huskies, the two running backs decided they needed to race.

The two both ran the 40-yard dash at Washington’s annual team combine in 2018 and Ahmed edged Gaskin by a hundredth of a second. Ahmed started touting himself as the Huskies fastest player. Gaskin, whose 400-meter relay team beat Ahmed’s when the two were in high school, didn’t agree. They returned to Washington’s football facility at about midnight and ran a best-of-5 sprinting series. Gaskin won 3 of 5, but Ahmed, who’s two years younger than Gaskin, shaved a full tenth of a second off his time in 2019.

Speed helped Ahmed get a shot with the Miami Dolphins and made him an intriguing option to step into the starting lineup when Gaskin landed on injured reserve with a knee injury Nov. 5. On Sunday, opportunity finally presented itself and Ahmed put together perhaps the best performance by a Dolphins running back all season.

“They’re rare and usually only come around once,” center Ted Karras said, “and he’s been doing such a great job.”

Just a week after he made his NFL debut, Ahmed made his first career start and helped Miami beat the Los Angeles Chargers, 29-21, at Hard Rock Stadium. With Gaskin and Matt Breida both hurt, the Dolphins (6-3) turned to Ahmed instead of fellow running back Jordan Howard, even after Howard was part of Miami’s offseason spending spree.

Howard got the starting nod last Sunday in the Dolphins’ win against the Arizona Cardinals and managed just 19 yards on 10 carries. Ahmed racked up 38 yards on just seven carries. Miami, apparently, saw enough. The Dolphins went with a player who began the season on the practice squad rather than their $5-million halfback. They even made Howard a healthy scratch.

“The way you perform in practice will go a long way with how much playing time you get,” coach Brian Flores said. “It’s not like we walked in Wednesday and said It’s yours. He practiced well Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. We talked to all the backs — everyone at every position — and said, Hey, this is what the plan is.”

On the Dolphins’ first offensive play of the game, Ahmed plunged up the middle to for a 1-yard touchdown run and the start of a breakout performance was underway.

Ahmed finished with 85 yards on 21 carries, even with three carries for negative-5 yards on the penultimate drive of the game as Miami simply tried to kill clock. The rookie accounted for 76.6 percent of the Dolphins’ rushing yards, and DeAndre Washington and Patrick Laird, the two other active running backs, each had only two carries.

Miami turned to Ahmed and the tailback never gave the Dolphins a reason to turn away.

“He went in there and performed well,” Flores said.

Ahmed, who ran for 1,020 yards in his final season in Seattle, went undrafted in part because of a vexing performance at the NFL Scouting Combine. Despite his reputation as one of the fastest players in college football, Ahmed ran a 4.62 in the 40 dash at the NFL Combine and didn’t get picked in the 2020 NFL Draft.

Miami claimed him off waivers in August, then released him in September in the final round of roster cuts, before signing him to the practice squad two days later. In October, the Dolphins promoted him to the active roster after they liked the way he emulated New York Jets running back Frank Gore on the scout team.

The small sample size in Arizona intrigued Miami yet again. On Sunday, he hit holes and found cutback lanes, and had three runs longer than 10 yards.

Gaskin has just eight such runs all season

“We just treated it like a regular week. That’s what it is. It’s another game for us and just be ready for anything, and that’s how we attack every week, just being ready,” Ahmed said. “I knew what I’d been coached to do this whole week.”