Are you ready for some football? Play for FREE and answer questions on the Monday night game every week. Make Your Picks

“I definitely feel like it has taken my game to another level,” Donald said.

No detail is too small to Henderson, something that has helped Donald and Brockers continue to improve into their seventh and ninth seasons, respectively.

“Usually you get into a situation where a lot of coaches don’t play the game, but they mentally know the game very well, where he’s played the game,” said Brockers, who has three sacks this season. “He’s played the position, so he understands what we go through.”

Henderson usually grabs some pads during individual drills at practice, hollering about his sturdiness and the players’ quick feet, while challenging them to knock him over.

“His natural ability to have energy every day just fuels us,” Brockers said.

Dawgwork is hard, but a lot of laughter comes with it.

On the practice field, Donald and Joseph-Day bust out dance moves when early 2000s hip-hop comes on. Brockers is often heard laughing, a distinguishable bellow from anywhere on the field.

Position meetings are focused and informative, as Henderson takes aim not only at opposing quarterbacks, but often at the opposing defense, whom he wants his unit to outperform every game, even though they’re not directly facing off.

“When we’re talking about the opposing team, I kind of talk — different,” Henderson said with a deep chuckle. “From that standpoint, know I don’t hold anything back. It is raw, it is uncut.”

Meetings often turn into brainstorm sessions, as Henderson solicits feedback and ideas from players. He breaks down film and provides feedback, speaks in terms that the players grasp and doesn’t withhold anything from them — good or bad.

“He’ll call me out in a room just like everybody else,” Donald said. “But that’s what I want. I want to be able to be coachable.”

And sometimes, the meetings go a bit off the rails with witty one-liners, jabs, puns and “a lot of inside jokes that have built up over the years,” Fox said.

“As a D-line, you got to be able to talk trash,” Joseph-Day said. “You’ve got to be able to think fast on your feet and be able to dish it out.”

Donald teased that Brockers and Fox are “jerks” who “don’t hold back nothin.'”

Joseph-Day called Donald and Brockers the top trash-talkers, while Fox said the 29-year-old Donald is “a big little kid” who “jokes around all the time and always poking at people, always having fun.”

‘It’s like a real brotherhood’

When Henderson had the dawgwork shirts placed in the defensive linemen’s lockers at the start of training camp, they each had something to say about them.

“Brock made jokes that it was AD’s body,” Joseph-Day said, laughing. “That it was a dog head and the body was AD’s.”

Said Fox: “It’s what Coach Henny wants to look like, as far as its muscles.”

And Donald got his two cents in: “So I’m the one that picked that picture,” he said, chuckling. “You can put it out there.”

For the record, “it’s AD with a dog face,” Henderson said. “We know how much this guy means to our group.”

Jokes aside, Donald softens when he talks about dawgwork, the grind, but also what it brings out in his teammates.

Even the best defensive player in the NFL can have a bad day. But he can’t stay down too long around this group.

“There are days when I come to work and there might be something personally going on in my life that I might be down a little bit,” Donald said. “But there’s always some way, somehow, one of these guys make me laugh when I don’t want to laugh and make me feel better, so having a group like that that isn’t just for football — it’s like a real brotherhood.”

And everyone wants a piece of it.

The line’s work isn’t always perfect, but the players strive to get there.

It’s about the grind. The griminess. And loving their dawgwork.