Mike McDaniel found healing strength in his own life. Now he must fix the broken Dolphins | Opinion
Here they are, trafficking again in the only drug that’s readily available, totally free and yet sometimes so hard to get hold of, that most powerful of all medicines: Hope.
The promise of it is, a promise oft broken, is really all the Miami Dolphins have to offer their fans, and so the beleaguered team introduced the latest healer Thursday inside the massive training center on the grounds of Hard Rock Stadium.
Mike McDaniel looks a bit like a pharmacist, oddly enough. He could be in a white smock. He is nobody’s stereotype of an NFL head coach. He gives off nerdy professor vibes. He is a slight, personable and youthful 38, barely 5-9, and no way going the 180 pounds the bio claims.
The new boss won’t ask his players to run through a brick wall for him. He will show them detailed analytics explaining why there is a safer, more efficient way forward. He studied history at Yale for goodness sake.
McDaniel has the cred, though, the resume. He has worked under Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay, which to this generation is the coaching tree with the blessed canopy. What Bill Belichick and Nick Saban were. All who know him say McDaniel is innovative, a great offensive play designer, a run-game specialist but also a man who can realize the best Tua Tagovailoa possible. Says he will call offensive plays himself.
But nobody knows or can say if he will be a great head coach, simply because he has never been one before.
So why is he the right man now to lead this franchise out of its disheveled, 20-year funk?
“I mean, why not?” he says. “What do the last 20 years have to do with this year? I feel completely comfortable with my knowledge. I know that I’m prepared for the moment. I’ve been preparing for it my entire career.”
This is McDaniel’s 16th NFL season and, yet, despite having been Shanahan’s right-hand man and offensive chief with the 49ers, Miami was the only team to interview him for a head coach opening.
You can find that a tad unsettling, or trust that Dolphins owner Stephen Ross and general manager Chris Grier have just mined a hidden gem and found the next great coach. A worrisome choice, that.
A couple of these new-coach-intros ago, Ross declared he hoped his new man was the next Don Shula. He said that about Adam Gase. Lesson learned. No such reference Thursday.
It is a surreal tableau into which McDaniel steps as a main character.
Franchise dysfunction surrounds him. His proving a great hire and winning big is all that will heal.
The firing of previous coach Brian Flores after the club’s first consecutive winning seasons since 2003 was a shock and hugely unpopular.
Flores followed with his explosive lawsuit against the NFL that included an accusation that Ross bribed him $100,00 per loss in 2019 to get the highest draft pick. It is a charge Ross denies but one the NFL is investigating. If true it could bring down Ross and cause massive league penalties for the Dolphins.
Asked about it Thursday, McDaniel said: “I can absolutely say there’s no red flags for me.” Followed by praise of Ross. (I mean what else the poor guy going to say?)
Unsurprisingly, Ross and Grier both were there Thursday to make opening statements extolling McDaniel (“A really exciting day” etc.— but not to take any questions from the media, knowing those would largely have zeroed in on Flores’ damning allegations against the owner.
Ross begins his 14th season as club owner, and McDaniel is his fifth different head coach (seventh if you count interims). Give him this much. He has yet to field a team that has won a playoff game. But he knows where the reset button is.
Dolfans look around and see the downtrodden.
The Buffalo Bills got really good fast.
The Cincinnati Bengals are in the Super Bowl (!).
“Well, we’re still down,” note the Detroit Lions.
Yes, so there is one team left whose most recent playoff victory goes further back than the Dolphins’ last in the 2000 season.
McDaniel is an interesting dude.
He can be funny behind a mic, as Thursday when every reported precede a question with “Welcome to Miami.” Said McDaniel: “That’s fifth welcome to Miami. I feel welcome. I’m waiting for someone to say welcome to Miami and finish the verse.”
He identifies as biracial (his father is Black), though he looks so not like a person of color he once had to convince a skeptical player by showing a photo from his parents’ wedding.
As for that 16-year climb to finally be a head coach, McDaniel admits alcohol issues delayed his rise. This never came up Thursday, but he told USA Today in 2017:
“Everyone’s always said the same thing about me: How talented I am, how smart I am, but. And I wanted to figure out why I kept sabotaging myself and what I was missing. For the first time in my life, I had men stand behind me and say, ‘Hey, you’re not alone, dude.’”
While in Cleveland, a fellow coach found vodka bottles under his desk. While in Atlanta, he spent three weeks in a treatment facility and was diagnosed with using alcohol to help ask his depression. He says he has not had a drink since early 2016.
McDaniel might have alluded to that Thursday when thanking his wife Katie, there with their toddler daughter.
“We’ve come a long way,” he said, nodding to his wife. “We’ve got a long way to go.”
It was the only time I heard his voice wobble with emotion.
We will know in time if this was a great, inspired hire by Miami.
Meantime, the hope Dolfans feel — it’s real enough for now.
And Mike McDaniel, he’s easy to root for: A man healing himself trying to do the same for this broken franchise.
This story was originally published February 10, 2022 at 1:48 PM.
