Only Ross knows whether things are that dire, but the buzzards (metaphorically) are circling \u2014 and so, literally, is an airplane: Before Sunday\u2019s game at Hard Rock, fans looked up to see a small aircraft toting a crowdsourced banner (\u201cFIRE GRIER. FIRE McDANIEL\u201d) urging the dismissal of the coach and the general manager (Chris Grier) who hired him.<\/p>\n
Life comes at you fast in the NFL, especially when you are an eccentric dude with a distinct fashion sense and an ultra-dry sense of humor.<\/p>\n
For most of McDaniel\u2019s first two seasons, a lot of people got the jokes and grooved on the vibe.<\/p>\n
These days, the laugh lines aren\u2019t landing \u2014 perhaps even in the Dolphins\u2019 locker room.<\/p>\n
All of this, of course, is a direct response to the scoreboard. McDaniel won 20 of his first 33 games, including a narrow playoff defeat in Buffalo at the end of his rookie season. In that game, the Dolphins \u2014 reduced to playing their third-string quarterback, rookie Skylar Thompson \u2014 fought back from a 17-0 deficit and nearly pulled off a massive upset on their final drive.<\/p>\n
Since then, however, McDaniel has gone 8-14, including a 26-7 road playoff defeat to the Kansas City Chiefs in which Miami\u2019s offense appeared lifeless amid the frigid weather. The Dolphins haven\u2019t won a postseason game since 2000, the league\u2019s longest current drought, and appear to be on a sharp downward trajectory.<\/p>\n
Granted, it\u2019s the NFL, and things can change in an instant \u2014 perhaps even with a shocking upset of the Bills on \u201cThursday Night Football.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet unless and until the Dolphins start winning again, McDaniel will remain a punch line and punching bag for a large section of the football world that, even amid the early affection, always saw him as an unnerving outlier. A day after the Dolphins absorbed a season-opening, 33-8 thrashing<\/a> at the hands of the Indianapolis Colts, former New York Jets and Bills coach Rex Ryan \u2014 whose idea of \u201ccool\u201d once included foot-fetish videos<\/a> \u2014 called McDaniel \u201cnerd boy\u201d during a diatribe on ESPN\u2019s \u201cGet Up.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe he\u2019s on a different level, McGenius guy, or whatever the hell he is. Nerd boy,\u201d Ryan said. \u201cTheir team has no respect for the coach. They play like that. They\u2019re like \u2018Come on, man, get us a dang guy in here.\u2019 Where\u2019s the physicality of this team? They\u2019re soft. \u2026 They have tons of talent. They don\u2019t play with any passion.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just old-school coaches like Ryan who are coming for McDaniel. Many of the people who loved him in the beginning \u2014 and I imagine some of the people reading this fall into this category \u2014 are rolling their eyes at his perceived schtick, authentic\u00a0as it may be.<\/p>\n Remember when McDaniel, after Justin Fields\u2019 repeated scrambles, told the then-Chicago Bears quarterback to \u201cStop it!\u201d during a 2022 game, and everyone laughed? There are people out there that I\u2019d beseech to follow that same two-word advice when it comes to piling on.<\/p>\n The larger concern is that some of these people may be lodged inside the Dolphins\u2019 organization and, specifically, wearing helmets and shoulder pads on game day.<\/p>\n How did we get here? In retrospect, it\u2019s not all that surprising, given the context of this head coach\u2019s hiring. McDaniel followed Brian Flores, whose brusque leadership style<\/a> alienated many people in the organization and destroyed his franchise quarterback\u2019s confidence.<\/p>\n McDaniel smartly went the other way, embracing Tua Tagovailoa<\/a> from the start. He constructed a fast-paced offense designed to maximize<\/a> the passer\u2019s talents and was on board with the franchise\u2019s decision to sign him to a four-year, $212.4 million extension in July 2024.<\/p>\n While successfully changing the Dolphins\u2019 culture and improving the workplace environment, McDaniel, league sources say, was at times overly lenient with star players such as wide receiver Tyreek Hill and cornerback Jalen Ramsey, forgiving poor practice efforts and other behavior perceived by teammates and assistant coaches as selfish. Hill, who told reporters minutes after a season-ending loss to the Jets last January, \u201cI\u2019m out, bro. It was great playing here,\u201d eventually walked back the comments and remained on the team. Ramsey was traded to the Pittsburgh Steelers in June, with Miami reacquiring star safety Minkah Fitzpatrick in the deal.<\/p>\n Since the end of last season, according to numerous Dolphins sources, McDaniel has been intentional in his attempt to tighten up the operation. However, it\u2019s always easier to go from stricter to more permissive in the locker room than to do the opposite, and the Dolphins\u2019 choppy start has created the impression that there\u2019s a lack of focus.<\/p>\n The Dolphins haven\u2019t quit, but their operation has been sloppy. For example, they had two chances to mount a game-winning drive in Sunday\u2019s fourth quarter but were undermined by pre-snap penalties. Afterward, McDaniel owned it, saying, \u201cI\u2019m very frustrated \u2014 there\u2019s some coaches and players that did not execute communication in a very dire period of the game. With the game on the line, our communication and our substitution was not up to par \u2014 and ultimately I hold all responsibility for all things, so I will make sure that things that should already be ironed out moving forward, we will not fall victim to the same thing again.\u201d<\/p>\n Given McDaniel\u2019s loyalty to his quarterback, it was somewhat jarring to hear Tagovailoa\u2019s take: \u201cIt was frustrating with the communication, with the guys inside the huddle and then what the personnel is, then the play. Do we have too many guys in? Why do we have another guy running in? Just the whole operation of that was not up to standard, was not up to par. I got to do a better job with our guys in that sense.\u201d<\/p>\n Mike McDaniel and Tua Tagovailoa were not happy with the communication in Week 2. (Sam Navarro \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n As John Lennon once sang, \u201cNobody loves you when you\u2019re down and out.\u201d<\/p>\n A few victories, of course, would have many singing a different tune. As someone who knew McDaniel long before he became trendy, I\u2019m hopeful that he can stay true to his essence, learn from his struggles and fight his way out of this mess.<\/p>\n His rise to the top of the profession is a truly inspirational underdog story. To his credit, rather than simply try to emulate a mentor like Kyle Shanahan (a strategy that imploded for so many ex-Bill Belichick assistants, such as Flores), McDaniel hasn\u2019t been afraid to be himself and buck head-coaching stereotypes.<\/p>\n In the spring of 2022, shortly after McDaniel parlayed his first and only NFL head-coaching interview into his Dolphins gig, we sat together in a Fort Lauderdale restaurant and discussed the challenge that awaited him. More than his well-documented strategic acumen, McDaniel said he looked forward to demonstrating what amounted to his crisis-management skills \u2014 the ability to navigate the type of \u201chigh-octane pressure situation\u201d he\u2019d encountered on numerous occasions as one of Shanahan\u2019s trusted lieutenants.<\/p>\n \u201cOh, that\u2019s actually what I\u2019m most excited about. \u2019Cause I think, within every game and within every season, there\u2019s a point \u2026 where you\u2019re like, \u2018Oh f\u2014\u2018 \u2026 and there\u2019s uncertainty and there\u2019s stress,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd in my opinion, that\u2019s when head coaches actually earn their money. So I\u2019m excited for the fact that I know that s\u2014\u2018s gonna hit the fan, or there\u2019s gonna be pressure, and I think that I\u2019m more built to thrive in that.\u201d<\/p>\n Is he running out of time? Well, it\u2019s the NFL, so that\u2019s a distinct possibility. McDaniel certainly wouldn\u2019t disagree, though he\u2019s not as fatalistic as some might perceive him, thanks to his dry delivery and a joke that didn\u2019t land.<\/p>\n Back in August, when a reporter said \u201cgood morning\u201d to the coach before the start of a news conference, McDaniel replied, \u201cFalse. Great morning.\u201d Pressed for an explanation, McDaniel channeled his inner Pink Floyd and answered, \u201cBecause we\u2019re another day closer to death.\u201d<\/p>\n Later, McDaniel told NFL Network\u2019s Rich Eisen, \u201cThe idea of the statement is to magnify the fact that life is not infinite and so this day shouldn\u2019t be taken for granted.\u201d<\/p>\n Rest assured, this Thursday night \u2014 and however many more Dolphins game days McDaniel gets to experience as coach \u2014 most certainly won\u2019t be.<\/p>\n (Top photo of McDaniel: Michael Hickey \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He sprinted off the Gillette Stadium field after a halftime interview, giving a sly look back at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[49,48,1720,514,927,82],"class_list":["post-150149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-miami-dolphins","tag-nfl","tag-opinion","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/USATSI_27086067.jpg\")
<\/p>\n