With historic start, Dolphins RB De’Von Achane is making sure NFL knows his game — and name

De’Von Achane had just made history, rushing for a Dolphins rookie record 203 yards in a 70-20 win against the Denver Broncos in Week 3 full of feats.

The collective NFL world couldn’t stop saying the third-round pick’s name. The only problem? It was being said incorrectly.

Less than 24 hours later, a subtle change had been made to the Dolphins’ pronunciation guide.

“Duh-VON A-chan,” the pronunciation now showed, instead of A-chain, as so many had been under the belief.

“I done heard my name like 30 different [ways]. ... Somebody asked me, ‘How do you really say your name?’” he recalled in front of his locker on Thursday.

At any rate, Achane has made it hard for people to forget his name. Through the first month of the season, his 11.4 yards per attempt leads the NFL; the New York Jets’ Breece Hall is second — at 6.6.

Achane has totaled 353 scrimmage yards and six touchdowns — four rushing, two receiving — over the past two weeks. He is the fourth player ever with six touchdowns through his first three career games. And with a touchdown against the New York Giants (1-3) on Sunday, Achane will become the second player in league history — and first since 1943 — with seven touchdowns through his first four career games.

“Not really surprising,” said wide receiver Jaylen Waddle, who played on the same AAU basketball program with Achane in Houston. “I told y’all way back when, when he first came in, that he was going to be a special player here. I’m standing by that. He’s going to be a special player for years to come.”

After sitting out the season opener as a healthy scratch, Achane has firmly carved a role in a Dolphins offense that ranks first in points scored. He’s quickly answered many pre-draft questions about how he’d transition to the NFL as an undersized back — he’s listed at 5-9 and 188 pounds — who was a track star at Texas A&M.

Though Achane was an All-American sprinter in college, he initially had no interest in track. Growing up on the south side of Houston, football and basketball were Achane’s choice of sports. He began playing football at 4 and didn’t start with track until the eighth grade.

“Who just wants to run? That’s how I was looking at it. But it changed when I got to high school,” he recalled.

He added: “All my friends, like everybody who was on the football team, were running track. So, I started running track. We were winning, I was getting fast, so I just kept going.”

Those friends on his freshman team included Bryson Stubblefield, who runs track at TCU, and Avery Helm, a starting cornerback at TCU.

Achane’s demeanor was so calm that Lloyd Banks, his track coach, wasn’t sure at first what his work ethic would be like in a different sport. But he quickly noticed a competitive fire underneath his cool nature.

“’Von wasn’t that guy where I’m a track guy that plays football. More than anything, ‘Von was more of a competitor,” Banks told the Miami Herald in a recent phone interview.

He added: “When he came out and the way he dominated practice, I was floored. I knew his ceiling was going to be high after that.”

Achane’s rise as a sprinter was meteoric. By his junior year, he posted the fastest 200-meter time in the nation. His senior year, he was named the 2020 Gatorade Texas Track & Field Athlete of the Year and helped post the best 4x100 relay time in the nation. Achane helped lead Thurgood Marshall High School to two consecutive titles.

At one point, Banks thought Achane could have considered the Olympics. His senior year coincided with preparation for the 2020 Games in Tokyo. Banks told Achane that if he was able to run a sub-20-second 200-meter dash, the Olympics might have to be under consideration (Achane ran a personal-best 20.20 200-meter dash in college, in line with the Olympic Trial qualifiers).

But a bid for a third state title was upended because of COVID. Still, Achane was already one of the most decorated high school athletes in Texas and excelling on the football field.

He was the 2019 Offensive Player of the Year and helped lead his team to two consecutive state championship games. A four-star recruit, Achane stayed home for college, electing to attend Texas A&M, about 90 minutes away.

Achane’s dual-sport star continued to shine at College Station. He was the Orange Bowl MVP as a freshman. He led the SEC in yards per carry as a sophomore, and was a first-team All-SEC selection in his junior and final season, an all-purpose threat and one of the most explosive players in the country. On the track, he was an All-American in the 100-meter, 200-meter and 4x100-meter relay.

“From the very beginning when I saw De’Von, he is a football player who just happens to have great speed and can run track,” Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher told the Herald. “He has great natural instincts when it comes to football and people don’t realize how strong and how good of a runner he is in between the tackles. He has great patience and is a natural runner. When he sees his opening, that’s when he can accelerate and go. A lot of track guys just run fast all the time, De’Von has a rhythm and instinct on setting up blocks and a tempo to his running.”

NFL cameras inside the Dolphins’ draft room on Apr. 28 were focused on general manager Chris Grier and head coach Mike McDaniel. The team had just submitted its selection of Achane with the No. 84 overall pick and McDaniel, seated next to Grier, animatedly pumped his fist.

McDaniel highly coveted Achane, whose 4.32 40-yard dash was fastest among backs at the NFL Scouting Combine, and had grown antsy about whether he would last till the Dolphins’ pick, he later explained.

“Certain people have opinions that he’ll be there, certain people don’t. I was really excited that Chris was right that a player was there,” he said.

Though extremely talented, there were questions about Achane’s role in a backfield that consisted of multiple veterans. And Miami was linked to several high-profile backs during the offseason. But Achane’s emergence has been a boon for an offense that prides itself on assembling a group of highly skilled and speedy players.

Achane acknowledged that getting up to speed with the offense felt like learning a new language, but the learning curve hasn’t looked steep. He said extra time after practice helped him hone in on the intricacies of the offense, and he’s taken on a role similar to wide receiver Tyreek Hill, lining up in a multitude of spots and getting the ball in a bunch of creative ways.

“I think the entire NFL can see it. Dude’s a special player,” quarterback Tua Tagovailoa said. “He understands ball like the back of his hand and I think that is one of the coolest characteristics that I can say about someone like him, is he’s very soft-spoken, but he’s very smart, very intellectual when it comes to the X’s and O’s of understanding where to line up, where he needs to be in the timing of the play and things like that. I think that’s something that needs to be said because it’s hard, especially being in this offense. So he’s done a tremendous job and I know he’ll continue to work hard and continue to do all he can to help us try to win games.’

On the fastest team in the NFL, Achane is staking his claim as the speediest. He’s currently the fastest-timed ball carrier this season, according to the NFL’s NextGen Stats, clocking in at 21.93 mph on his 67-yard touchdown run in Week 3 that brought Miami to 70 points. He also holds the fifth-fastest time. While debates on the fastest Dolphin remain a weekly source of disagreement in the locker room — Hill recently said he’s No. 1, followed by practice squad cornerback Ethan Bonner — Achane’s skill set has been a perfect fit for the Dolphins’ scheme.

And as Banks watched Achane’s record-setting performance two weeks ago, the sight of him effortlessly gliding across the Hard Rock Stadium was an awfully familiar sight.

“It looks like him in high school. It was easy,” he said. “Our thing when he was here: just get him in space. If we get him in space, it’s over.”