"In the aftermath of a moderately impressive preseason performance against Jacksonville, the Miami Dolphins' offense was all thumbs.

Running back Ronnie Brown's sprained right thumb means thumbs down for his participation in this week's home preseason game against Kansas City, though Dolphins coach Tony Sparano acknowledged that he would like to get Brown more work than his five preseason carries.

Veteran center/guard Steve McKinney got the thumb-over-the-shoulder, take-a-hike signal, getting waived Monday afternoon.

The coaching staff is close to putting their thumb on a starting quarterback, presumably Chad Pennington.

Brown, who has played a decreasing number of games each of his three NFL seasons, brushed off any suggestion he's snake-bit or injury prone.

''Well, I haven't missed a game yet so that's a good thing,'' Brown said. ``I try not to worry about it. Some of those things happen. I try to look at it on the positive side, and everything happens for a reason, for the most part. I'm going to attack it the same way I did the ACL thing, hope it's not anything major. I'm left-handed, like I said, so I'm not worried about this.''

Both Brown and Sparano downplayed the injury, saying he was held out of the remainder of the Jacksonville game as a precaution. Missing Saturday does leave Sparano only one more preseason game to get Brown anything close to the amount of work he would see during the regular season."