MIAMI GARDENS — Monday was a good day for linebacker Jaelan Phillips.

The best day, in some ways.

“It’s been a hell of a journey,” he said after that journey took the major turn he’d waited for these past 8 1/2 months: coming off the physically unable to perform list and practicing with his Miami Dolphins teammates.

As good as it was to know Phillips is on the right track after tearing his Achilles, he couldn’t help but reflect on the day he was injured on that notorious turf at MetLife Stadium.

There he was in the shower of the visitors’ locker room, the water cascading down his face not just from the shower head. But here’s the thing about that moment: His thoughts were precisely the opposite of what you’d think.

'“I was crying and I just told myself, like, ‘This is OK. I’m going to attack this. I’m going to get over this and this is going to make me stronger at the end of the day.'

“So I really thank God. I really said thank you. 'Thank you for giving me this opportunity because I know it’s going to make me a monster.’ ”

Doubtful that anyone — God included — ever needed further proof that Jaelan Phillips is a different breed, but there you have it.

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They call the occasion that Phillips was injured Black Friday, even though there wasn’t a Walmart around with emotions all over the board to match what was going on inside the Dolphins’ locker room.

Mike McDaniel: Jaelan Phillips was on verge of stardom

After acknowledging his frustrating start to the 2023 season in which he missed three of the first six games and didn’t have a sack, Phillips had been on a streak of four games with a sack entering that Jets game, which coach Mike McDaniel essentially acknowledged to Phillips.

“I was balling out,” Phillips said. “Mike had told me before the game, like, ’This is your opportunity to kind of be a household name.’ ”

How much must that memory sting now? Dolphins fans are well-acquainted with Phillips’ story, of having to temporarily retire from football at UCLA because of concussions before doctors reconsidered. He resurrected his career at the University of Miami and was Miami’s first-round pick in 2021. Now, with Phillips nursing a torn Achilles, the Dolphins didn’t blink. They picked up the fifth-year option on his contract.

To say they were confident Phillips would do everything in his power to come back doesn’t do it justice.

“I thought he was going to be the number one violator of secretly overdoing what he was supposed to do,” McDaniel said.

Phillips didn’t get his chiseled body by sitting on the couch. But he’s sharp enough to listen to what his body and his doctors and his trainers are telling him.

“The first couple of times I was running, it felt good,” he said. “But then afterwards, I’m super, super sore. And having to cut it down for a little bit. So it’s just been an up-and-down process, like most things in life.”

Phillips: Peers including Aaron Rodgers were encouraging

Phillips also listened to peers who have been through this injury. He compared notes with Aaron Rodgers, Kirk Cousins, ex-Dolphin Vince Biegel and Shaq Barrett.

“I’ve just been picking people’s brains and kind of the main takeaway I’ve gotten from everybody is that they feel 100 percent,” Phillips said. “They don’t feel like they had to miss a step or that — whether it’s a year or two years afterwards — like they don’t feel like there’s an injury there. So that just definitely reassured me.”

All this should reassure the Dolphins that there’s at least a chance Phillips will be in uniform Sept. 8 for the opener against Jacksonville. But that will only happen if he’s ready.

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“It’s hard to give you an exact timeline or an exact date when I’m coming back,” he said.

Monday was a good day for his comeback, all right. A baby step, one supposes, is as good a name as any.

But when Phillips is back in his No. 15 game-day jersey, when he’s exploding off the line and out-sprinting a quarterback who somehow believed he was getting away, that’s when Jaelan Phillips will take an entirely different kind of step in this recovery.

Call it a monster step.

Dolphins reporter Hal Habib can be reached at  hhabib@pbpost.com. Follow him on social media @gunnerhal. Click here to subscribe.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Miami Dolphins' Jaelan Phillips: I thank God for Achilles 'opportunity'