“I refuse to accept this as reality.” That was Mike McDaniel’s reaction to the fact that children dressed up as, well, him for the US spooky festival Halloween: They wore baggy hoodies and nerd sunglasses, like the coach of the Miami Dolphins does at his team’s games, and Then they ran as fast as they could – just as McDaniel sprinted to the dressing room at the beginning of the half-time break after the obligatory TV interview. The sentence is a typical McDaniel sentence: self-deprecating, a little naive, with a winking grin. Another McDaniel sentence that he recently said after a defeat: “I don’t want to call it a bad game, more like: Hats off to us for raising your expectations so high.”
The expectations are huge, the Dolphins have been the “favorite of the neutrals” since Sunday’s 30-0 win against the New York Jets – i.e. the team that those fans who often want to click their tongues while watching football are now cheering on. In the past four years it was often the Kansas City Chiefs, who won the Super Bowl twice during this time (2020, 23). This year it’s the Dolphins, and that has a lot to do with this 40-year-old McDaniel, who obviously doesn’t want to believe what’s happening to him. The Yale graduate (history major; thesis on the deals that made the US professional league NFL what it is today) could describe his career with this very sentence: “I refuse to accept this as reality.”
As if he was in the hall all night – coach McDaniel looked like a man possessed
McDaniel started as an intern with the Denver Broncos in 2005, when he was 22; A year later he became an assistant to then-quarterbacks coach Troy Cahoun with the Houston Texans. “He’s like a sponge that never gets full,” Cahoun now says to SZ about McDaniel: “As a trainer, you go home at 11 p.m., and when you stand on the mat at six the next morning, you think: ‘Oh dear ‘That guy was here all night!'”
For a few years, McDaniel bounced around the NFL as an assistant, learning from coaches Mike Shanahan, Gary Kubiak, Matt LaFleur, Sean McVay, Kyle Shanahan, Mike Pettine and Dan Quinn on six different teams. It’s like dipping a sponge that never gets full into some of the richest waters football has to offer – and at least since 2017, when he was in charge of the San Francisco 49ers’ running game, he’s been allowed to show what happens. If you squeeze that sponge out again: offensive spectacle. In 2021 he became the 49ers’ offensive boss, and a year later the Dolphins hired him as head coach – even though he had never worked as a head coach before.
McDaniel is symbolic of a new generation of head coaches in the NFL: They are a departure from gnarled bones like Bill Belichick (New England Patriots), who embody the mantra “Defense wins championships”. People like McVay – who the Los Angeles Rams made head coach in 2017 as a 30-year-old and won the title in 2022 – and like McDaniel represent offensive spectacles, like risky and creative. McDaniel’s specialty is efficiency in the running game, and of course he has a near-perfect pair for that with the Dolphins in veteran Raheem Mostert (31 years old) and rookie De’Von Achane (22 years old). The Dolphins are in first place in the yards per running play statistic.
This efficiency is the basis for the passing game, and it helps McDaniel that playmaker Tua Tagovailoa has reached the height of his abilities and now understands himself almost blindly – which is also necessary in the NFL – with Tyreek Hill, one of the best wide receivers in history . Usually in football, everyone lines up before the start of the play and stays there – every now and then an offensive player moves. It’s called “in motion,” and you could say that one or more people on the Dolphins are constantly “in motion.” This makes timing difficult for the opposing defense but also makes it difficult to predict what will happen.
When a reporter recently remarked on how complicated the Dolphins’ plays had become and how precise the execution was, McDaniel said, “How great is that? You know what you’re talking about!” When the reporter wanted to know more details: “Now you’re showing off!”
Last week’s defeat was a blow to the stomach – but now the players were having fun
That’s McDaniel’s style: expert, friendly, always with a little joke and, despite all the mental exercise in this discipline, with an understanding of human aspects. When the Dolphins had scored 70 points against the Denver Broncos at the start of the season and still needed three more to break the NFL record, McDaniel deliberately didn’t go hunting for points “because it wouldn’t have had any impact on the rest of the season.” On Sunday, however, he continued to press on the gas despite the clear lead: “Because last week’s defeat was a blow to the stomach, there were some question marks. Now the boys were able to have fun playing football because the pressure was off.”
McDaniel also had no problem with Hill wanting to achieve an individual goal (gaining 2,000 yards); On Sunday, however, he preferred to leave him on the bench for the entire game because of his damaged ankle, meaning the record has become virtually unattainable: “He’s so important for us, we won’t risk anything.”
The big goal is of course the first Super Bowl in 50 years. The question before the final games of the regular season, all against fellow favorites (Dallas Cowboys, Baltimore Ravens, Buffalo Bills): Can someone who has never been a head coach before lead this team to the title? Former boss Cahoun’s answer: “A loud, clear: Yes!” It wouldn’t surprise anyone if the Dolphins were in the Super Bowl in Las Vegas in February – except maybe McDaniel. He would probably say: “I refuse to accept that as reality.”