MIAMI — Anytime a young player hangs his head, feeling low about their performance in practice, or a game, discouraged about his standing with the team he is asked to hold that thought for a minute.

That’s when coaches will pull up the often-updated video of the Miami Dolphins’ best rags-to-riches story, a tale about a defensive lineman claimed off waivers in 2019 who lived in an RV his full season in South Florida because he didn’t have enough confidence in himself to sign a yearlong lease.

Zach Sieler’s not only proud of his story, his past, he’s grateful every time defensive line coach Austin Clark puts on the video of the defensive tackle barely moving anyone early in his career because it gives young players on Miami’s roster a chance to see what happened when they buy in, commit themselves to how they’re being coached and reminds them to never quit on their dream, or themselves.

It’s an instant injection of hope, and that’s the greatest achievement this former Ferris State walk-on — a real life Rudy Ruettiger — who actually blossomed into an NFL star, has ever wanted to accomplish.

Today the Sieler name represents resiliency and hard work.

“We tell these guys if a waived guy — which is basically what I am — can do it, and do it at the level it doesn’t matter who you are because the technique, the system works,” said Sieler, who received a three-year extension earlier this month that’s worth up to $67.75 million, and guarantees him $44 million because he produced back-to-back 10-sack seasons, anchoring a top-10 defense for the past two years. “So don’t put your head down. Don’t get down and out when you’re not getting reps. Just go to work. And make sure you’re ready.”

For the record, Sieler, who has started 65 of the 91 regular-season games he has played the past seven years, wasn’t undrafted.

In fact, the Baltimore Ravens selected the Division II talent in the seventh round (pick No. 238th overall) of the 2018 NFL draft, making him the first Ferris State athlete to reach the NFL.

Sieler spent most of his first two NFL seasons in Baltimore, appearing in just six games. Then came December 4, 2019, which is the day the Ravens released him hoping to sneak the defensive lineman back on their practice squad.

The rebuilding Dolphins claimed Sieler the next day. Almost immediately, coaches could see there was promise in his game because he played right away, and the next week he contributed seven tackles and a sack in an overtime 38-35 win against the Cincinnati Bengals, despite having very few practices with the Dolphins.

He would finish that season with the Dolphins, and the next season was the COVID year of 2020, where NFL teams held meetings over zoom, and only saw each other for the few hours they were allowed to practice at the team facility.

During that season Clark was laboring to teach all his defensive linemen a new technique to use, and players would have to film themselves working on it, and send it into the coaches.

Sieler said “I looked horrible” doing the drills, but that was the first time he was being taught the finer points of the game and his position. The more he dug into what Clark was teaching him, the better he got playing next to Christian Wilkins, and the duo eventually became a force.

And that’s the origin story of the Sieler tape, which evolves from him constantly being spotted on the ground to seeing Sieler make numerous game-altering highlights the past two seasons.

“As a young player, particularly if you were drafted high, let’s say you come in and realize right away, ‘Oh my God, these are grown [explicit] men and I’m behind. And if repetition is the mother of skill, I have a long way to go,’” said defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver, who happens to be a former NFL defensive lineman. “But when they see where a guy like Zach [Sieler] started, Year 1, on the ground, not winning, getting knocked off the ball, things of that nature and they see where he’s progressed to, I think they see, ‘All right, there is a process that I can trust in. I know if I put in the necessary work, I can reap these same results and rewards.’”

Not bad for a country boy born and raised in Pinckney, Mich. — a city that spans all of 1.6 miles, which possesses a population that flirts with 3,000.

Sieler grew up an outdoorsman, deer hunting, riding four-wheelers around his family’s 30-acre ranch with his two younger brothers. His life wasn’t always about football, even though he played since his adolescent years.

And it still isn’t.

He’s a husband to Hannah Cook Sieler, who happened to play basketball for the University of Alabama.

They were introduced by Bradley Bozeman, a former Crimson tide center who happened to be a member of the Ravens’ 2018 draft class, selected one round ahead of Sieler.

Zach and Hannah hit it off immediately, and eventually began a long-distance relationship when Hannah was playing professional basketball in Greece.

“She’s the athlete in the family,” Sieler proudly said about Hannah, who is eighth all-time scorer at Alabama with 1,468 career points. “Let’s just say I don’t play basketball with her.”

As the relationship got stronger Hannah came to live with Zach in South Florida during the year his residence was a 35-foot fifth-wheel RV he bought used off Facebook Marketplace for $25,000 after his rookie season in Baltimore.

Even with a practice squad player’s salary, Zach could have easily afforded an apartment, or a short-term rental. But at that time, his commitment to his NFL dream meant he might bounce from city to city until he found his footing, and his career took off. He hated packing and living out of a suitcase. And even worse, he despised wasting money and lives a minimalist life, so the RV made sense at the time.

“I didn’t want to unpack and pack, or putting my things in storage. With an RV you just close it up, hitch it, and you’re ready to go,” said Zach, who ironically sold the RV for a $3,000 profit once he and Hannah got married and bought a home in the 2021 season.

Still, the couple views those years as some of their best times. They were the years before their son Stetson arrived.

“It was fun,” Zach said. “We loved it.”

These days Zach’s loving the role he has in Miami. He’s at a point where the coaches trust his opinions, and his teammates lean on his wisdom as a veteran leader. The game has also slowed down for this 31-year-old.

And more important, everything he’s gained he’s earned. And did it the hard way, without taking any shortcuts, and by staying true to himself.

“When you coach a guy for six years, and watch him go from where he started till now — his work ethic, the type of leader he’s become — from where he started to where he is now is remarkable,” Clark said. “He’s an example of how we want you to work, the way we want you to play within the scheme. How we want you to carry ourselves as professionals.”

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