The media machine for Mike McDaniel has done a hell of a job. Because every time I turn around, it sure seems like the national media has retained the rosiest of memories of the time McDaniel served as the head coach of the Miami Dolphins.
Make no mistake about it. I like Mike and I wish him well. I hope there’s lot of successes coming his way. He’s made it through some tough personal chapters in life — and learned some tough lessons the hard way during his time in Miami. I believe he’ll be better for it.
But I also believe the Dolphins will, collectively, be better for having moved on, too.
Some things you just can’t put back into the box. Just like some things can’t be measured in value for a head coach. They need to be felt or endured. That’s, unfortunately, where the McDaniel years often came up short. Sure, there were missing stats, such as a league-worst 52.9% 3rd & short conversion rate across his four years in Miami. Or the league’s 23rd-ranked goal-line offense from 2022 to 2025. Although that same national media machine has generally dismissed those issues as Tua Tagovailoa stats and “bad offensive line” stats — not Mike McDaniel indictments.
That’s the whole rub on the Mike McDaniel thing. Mike was hired in part because of his belief in Tua. He did the 600+ play reel that seemed really cool until the Dolphins hit a glass ceiling in their offensive operations and McDaniel couldn’t seem to build another pitch into the offense’s arsenal that wasn’t a perimeter screen. Mike, of course, also pitched the entire football operation on skill players over offensive linemen when things were first getting rolling in Miami.
Jacob Meshel@JacobMeshel
“I knew in my mind that Tua needed skill position players that were dynamic with the ball in their hands.” McDaniel talks about how, during his first offseason, a lot of the ppl in the building wanted to spend $ OL, but he saw that Tua needed weapons.
6:33 PM · Mar 29, 2023 · 19.8K Views
4 Replies · 17 Reposts · 137 Likes
”Some of the people in personnel were like ‘You know what? No. We need to spend money on offensive linemen.’ And I could feel that I knew that I disagreed with it. But I hate the ‘hey everyone, no because I said so’.” — Mike McDaniel to Mike Silver, March 2023
The problems in Miami were certainly compounded by an executive (Chris Grier) who was notorious for deferring to his coach’s whims. That, obviously, was the case in the McDaniel era.
So blaming the poor performances of McDaniel’s offenses for poor offensive line play or, alternatively, Tua Tagovailoa conveniently ignores the fact that it was McDaniel who put those variables in place with concrete. The conviction McDaniel moved on both fronts, emphatically imposing his football belief system onto the vision of the team. He did that by choosing not to prioritize offensive line play over passing game weapons. And then the team tripled down on the approach in 2024 — when it ultimately helped to sink the offense with replacement level guard play at both spots.
McDaniel was the one who went to bat to owner Stephen Ross when Tagovailoa’s 2024 contract extension hung in the air into training camp. It was him who went up to the owner’s suite and interjected to help push things across the finish line. Tua said so himself when he had his press conference after signing the deal.
You simply cannot, under any circumstances, subsequently throw your hands to the air and say you can’t run the offense you want to because the quarterback is too limiting just 13 months later. That would be a supreme contradiction of your previous $212 million belief in the same player.
Yet that’s exactly what McDaniel (or at least his camp) started doing once the shit hit the fan last season. I go back to a written piece I had for A to Z Sports, one that called out the out of character “football assessment” of what was happening in Miami from NFL insider Tom Pelissero. Pelissero is a news guy, not a pundit. But he had a lot of opinions about what was happening in Miami that felt conveniently like talking points.
You’ve already started to hear some noise after the Week 3 loss that McDaniel has the hardest job in football — building a game plan for a quarterback who can’t get hit. That quip came from NFL insider Tom Pelissero on Friday, during an oddly specific guest spot on The Rich Eisen Show.
Among the items Pelissero, who is traditionally an insider and not an analyst, offered throughout his segment with Eisen on the Dolphins:
“A lot” of the issues Miami experienced boils down to Tua Tagovailoa (with an inclusion that it’s been that way all season)
Five turnovers for Tagovailoa in three weeks
The Dolphins don’t run the play in question “very often” despite the insistence from Bills defenders that they knew it was coming. “They don’t run that play a lot.”
The whole play, in question, looked “rushed” and questioned Tagovailoa’s timing
It doesn’t look like McDaniel has lost the locker room, or that the leaders have bailed
Tua Tagovailoa’s contract ties him to Miami in 2026, which makes a head coach hire less attractive if they look to hire one
McDaniel jumps “through hoops” to design an offensive game plan for a quarterback who “can’t get hit”
For the record, the Dolphins did run variations of that play “a lot”. They ran a similar concept no less than 5 times before in the previous 118 minutes of football they’d played. But more on that in a bit…before I lose the plot here.
The NFL Network connection certainly waxed poetic for McDaniel all season long amid the turmoil. It isn’t hard to sniff out some of the connections rooted in the tone of the reporting. I felt that was evident as I listened to the reporting carry water for McDaniel’s case to stay in Miami throughout the season. But it was never more evident than in the non-sensical farce that was the McDaniel/general manager interview saga early in 2026.
McDaniel strode to the podium with his future exceptionally in doubt at the end of the 2025 season, with NFL Network (of all outlets) reporting that McDaniel was expected back just minutes before the press conference started. The coach stated that yes, he would be a part of the Dolphins’ general manager search. But as the questions kept coming, McDaniel’s statement offered less and less weight. No, he wouldn’t be providing names to the search committee. No, he wasn’t sitting in on the interviews.
Soooooo……
Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer gave McDaniel 50/50 odds. ESPN’s Adam Schefter insisted that his fate was not determined on McAfee:
”As for Mike McDaniel, I know people are saying he’s safe,” Schefter said. “I don’t think they’ve made any decisions there yet about his future. He might be safe, but he might not. I think that is still playing out in real time. Nothing has been decided there.”
Yet NFL Network insisted — and had insisted for WEEKS — that McDaniel was safe. The Miami Herald’s Barry Jackson also pointed out as this saga unwrapped that the NFLN voice was the only one speaking to his favor. What a convenience, right?! I go back to that McDaniel quote about the GM search. This was my take on it in real time.
Part of the McDaniel plan for 2026, as we have since found out via Darren Waller, was to move off Tua Tagovailoa this offseason and “give the keys” to Quinn Ewers. Miami, per Waller, wanted the tight end back if under McDaniel’s direction, too.
Just 18 months after striding to the owner’s suite and putting the final vote of confidence into a $212 million contract extension that “needed to be done”, the same head coach was telling players in exit interviews that they were moving off the same player. The guy who picked said player? Already gone. Others on the coaching staff? Almost assuredly gone in this hypothetical world, too.
But the coach who stuck his neck out to help finalize the deal was going to wipe his hands clean of the situation and coach the team through the financial fallout, while allegedly helping to pick the next general manager? Accountability doesn’t work like that.
And that, of course, if the crux of the story here.
Accountability and it’s absence in too many moments that helped define the 2022-2025 Miami Dolphins. You don’t find that one in the box score. If you don’t have it, it will start springing leaks into all of the little cracks in your operation. Until suddenly you’re full-on flooded.
That’s where the Miami Dolphins found themselves. That’s what won’t be missed in the new era without Mike McDaniel.
I will certainly miss his creative play design. He’s a touch beyond brilliant in his ability to tie elements of a play together. His willingness to try unorthodox measures is admirable, even if some of the solutions we found in 2025 ended up further handcuffing the limitations of the offense.
I won’t drop the clips because it is paid content and I want to be respectful of that. But pick out any one of ‘The QB School’ videos committed to breaking down the 2025 Miami Dolphins offense and see how long it takes for the first expletive to fly over “orgies in the backfield”. The phrase still elicits a laugh out of me every time.
But I digress. We’re on to what we’ll miss about Mike McDaniel. Some of his play designs were top shelf. I don’t believe that makes him a top-tier play caller by default — but the new toys he has with a new skill set in Los Angeles this season will afford him the opportunity to change my mind.
Cool, creative play designs are a flashy piece of the puzzle. But they are, in fact, just one piece all the same.
It’s actually kind of ironic how the ultimate sport for context and human element has become so ruled by the numbers. More people on rosters than any other sport — the ultimate human element game. Yet EPA per attempt this, success rate that. Splashy, flashy play designs were the best of Mike McDaniel, the Miami Dolphins head coach. That’s the part everyone in the national media remembers as they continue to pine for him as a play caller.
But the human elements and the nuance of Mike McDaniel the head coach (not the person) came up catastrophically short. And those won’t be missed one bit. They won’t even be recognized from the 30,000 foot view. You have to have lived them to even know they’re worth moving on from. Which is why my memories of Mike McDaniel already aren’t as rosy as the media machine. And I know yours aren’t, either.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.