Why new Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel is 'not like any other head coach I’ve worked with' (2024)

A cloud of smoke hung in the air.

In a dimly lit cigar lounge in Houston in 2018, 49ers assistants Jon Embree and Mike McDaniel took a break from preseason work with the Texans. Embree, at that point an NFL assistant for a decade, sensed McDaniel was feeling down, so he offered some encouragement.

He told the young coach he was really smart. Creative, too. He listened well and had an incredible memory. He was naturally honest and self-effacing, didn’t take himself too seriously and didn’t care what anybody else thought about him. He embraced risk.

And then, after a puff, Embree told McDaniel, “You have the qualities to not only be a head coach in the National Football League but to be a successful one.”

Four years later, the smoke comes from orange-blossom water poured over dry ice on a plate of Australian Wagyu beef. The shimmering Atlantic Ocean reflects off the lenses of McDaniel’s designer glasses. He is a head coach, as Embree envisioned he would be.

Some coaches are like Army generals; some like general contractors. There are those who approach their jobs like motivational speakers and others who think of themselves as plumbers. McDaniel, the 39-year-old new coach of the Miami Dolphins, is a computer engineer of a football coach.

“I’m not like any other head coach I’ve worked with,” he says.

At about 5-foot-9 and 165 pounds, he is not imposing. He’s got sneaker game — he was upset he missed “Yeezy Day” during training camp. McDaniel is more likely to try to motivate with logic and evidence than volume and emotion. For whatever it’s worth, he is biracial, the son of an African-American father and White mother.

He cracks jokes — the reporters in the Bay Area used to call his weekly news conferences the Mike McDaniel Comedy Hour. But when he’s not on a stage, the punchlines sometimes don’t land, because his sense of humor is Sauvignon blanc-dry.

Dolphins receivers coach Wes Welker can be similarly droll, which is one reason they click. “He and I will be the only ones laughing at times,” says Welker, who also worked with McDaniel in San Francisco.

There is not a head coach in the league more fascinating. Some see him as the next big thing, an unconventional genius. And others wonder if McDaniel’s Dolphins will become a raging bonfire.

No one knows where this is going. But we can understand where McDaniel wants it to go by looking through the prism of those who worked with him then and now.

McDaniel wants a team that maximizes its potential.

He believes that in today’s world more than ever, a competitive advantage can be gained just by being present. He has preached to his players about it often, but observing him is more powerful than anything he could say. When he’s with you, you get 100 percent of him. McDaniel’s green-blue eyes lock on yours. Don’t bother texting him — your SMS and emojis may never meet those eyes. He goes for 12 hours without a glance at his phone.

While he is where he is, McDaniel trusts others to do their part to maximize the team’s potential.

McDaniel often speaks about trust falls, in which someone falls backward intentionally, trusting others to catch them. Ask him about it, and his mind races. In an answer that wanders to nearly five minutes, he talks about the inverse correlation between his ascension in the profession and how dependent he now is on others, the nuts and bolts of human relationships, creating an aura that enables each individual to have the best day-to-day experience, thinking more macro as a head coach, maximizing variables he can control, seizing the opportunity to make 2022 memorable and the power of a group of people working for a common goal.

A lot is going on beneath that dark, wavy, swept-back hair.

It’s not difficult to understand why one of his job interviews with the Dolphins lasted 10 hours.

It’s also not difficult to understand why he wanted to bring Embree with him from the 49ers. Long considered one of the preeminent tight end teachers in the sport, Embree had a hand in the successes of Cameron Brate, Jordan Cameron, Chris Cooley, Daniel Graham, Tony Gonzalez, George Kittle and Marcedes Lewis, among others. Says McDaniel, “He’s gotten the most out of them, and they give him the greatest compliment you can give — ‘He’s the best I’ve had.’”

Embree doesn’t do it by emphasizing technique as much as he does by creating a culture. That’s why he was one of McDaniel’s first hires as assistant head coach in charge of tight ends. Embree’s value isn’t just in bringing out the best in Mike Gesicki. It’s in maintaining a level of excellence in his job and establishing expectations for the players he touches that raise the bar for everyone on the team.

In the offseason, McDaniel told a story to his new team. When McDaniel was an offensive assistant with the Falcons in the spring of 2016, wide receiver Aldrick Robinson was dropping passes. But McDaniel didn’t see anything wrong with his hands. He asked Robinson if he thought he was seeing the ball well. Robinson said he was, but he decided to have his vision checked anyway. Robinson discovered he needed prescription lenses, so he got contacts. That season, he didn’t drop a pass.

Robinson played for McDaniel in Washington, Atlanta and San Francisco, and now he’s a first-year offensive assistant. He’s also an example of someone willing to do whatever was necessary to be the best he could be.

Trent Sherfield’s signing with the Dolphins in March didn’t create many waves as he has started just five games in his four-year career. But the wide receiver’s presence has a value that can’t be measured by analytics. In 2018, Sherfield joined the Cardinals after being bypassed in the draft. With Larry Fitzgerald as a teammate, Sherfield had more opportunity to learn than play, and he took full advantage.

“To see how he worked and how he sustained his success for 18 years in this league, I had the answers to the test,” he says. “I know what it takes to be in this league, and I know what it takes to stay in this league.”

Fitzgerald connected Sherfield with James Smith, his coach for psychological training. Smith, Sherfield, says, helped him govern his emotions and focus on what he calls his “three-foot world” — that which he can control. No matter how many catches or special teams tackles Sherfield makes, he is likely to be a model for what can happen when hunger meets professionalism.

You can see Sherfield in McDaniel, who was given a coaching internship by Mike Shanahan in Denver because he was impressed with McDaniel’s hustle and industriousness as a Broncos ball boy during McDaniel’s high school days.

McDaniel went to Yale on an academic scholarship and walked on to the football team as a wide receiver. He never caught a pass, but he probably led the team in commitment. After he did 39 straight pull-ups, he was voted the pound-for-pound strongest player on the team.

If his team maximizes its potential the way he did, and the way some of those he has brought with him did, Dolphins fans will be pleased with the results.

McDaniel wants a team that can beat yours to the end zone.

When the Dolphins walk from their locker room to the practice field, they pass a sign that reads, “Fast, Physical, Elite Technique.”

The first word on the sign is first for a reason.

When free agency began, McDaniel was quick to sign running back Raheem Mostert, whom he had coached in San Francisco. At New Smyrna Beach High School, Mostert won the 100 meters in the Florida 3A state finals with a time of 10.68 seconds. He won the 60 and 200 meters at the Big Ten indoor track-and-field championships when he was at Purdue, and NFL.com called him the fastest player in college football. He ran a 4.38 in the 40-yard dash at his pro day.

A few days after acquiring Mostert, the Dolphins traded for wide receiver Tyreek Hill. According to NextGen Stats, the fastest runs in the NFL since 2016 were by Hill, who hit 23.24 mph in 2016, and Mostert, who ran 23.09 mph in 2020.

And the Dolphins already had Jaylen Waddle, who had the fastest GPS time in the country as a college player in 2020, according to NFL Network draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah.

Sherfield says this is the fastest offense he has been a part of “by far.”

Why does McDaniel value speed? Sherfield says he wants to force defenders to play off coverage. Welker says the route concepts McDaniel prefers are beneficial to burners.

“If you look at how our offense is designed, our run game, our bootlegs and then having play action with it, that speed will make defensive coordinators nervous,” Welker says.

“Speed is not something you have to have,” McDaniel says. “But it’s very, very desirable.”

McDaniel wants a team that is built around the interior offensive line.

Given the coaching tree from which he grew, the position he played and his appearance, this is difficult for some to fathom.

In 2015, Mike Person signed with the Falcons to play guard. When he was introduced to McDaniel, an offensive assistant, he was told McDaniel was an O-line guy.

“I was thinking to myself, ‘There’s no way he is. He’s probably a wide receiver guy,’” Person says. “But then when you talk to him, you get it.”

When McDaniel was an offensive assistant for Washington under Mike Shanahan from 2011 to 2013, the more experienced up-and-coming offensive assistants — Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVay and Matt LaFleur — took ownership of the passing game. McDaniel had to find another area to contribute, so he became a run game specialist.

Before becoming San Francisco’s offensive coordinator last season, his title for four years was run game coordinator. Ben Garland, then the 49ers’ center, called him “the run-game ‘Rain Man.’”

McDaniel often is referred to as a “run-first” coach. But he doesn’t see himself that way.

“I think you emphasize football inside out, so I’m more of an interior line play-first guy,” he says. “I guess that is the run, but it’s also the pass. To earn yards, start inside out and then make defenses defend the entire field.”

That’s why Person, who played for McDaniel in Atlanta and San Francisco, is on his staff now as an offensive assistant. As well as anyone, Person understands why McDaniel emphasizes interior offensive line play, and he knows how he wants his blockers coached.

“He’s going to take care of the offensive linemen, put them in the correct positions as often as he can,” Person says. “He has a very unique way of playing to guys’ strengths and he knows them inside and out. That gives you confidence to go out and do your job to know you will be in the best possible position for your skill set.”

McDaniel wants a team that operates with humility.

He knows that a group of players that values humility will embrace sacrifice, accept responsibility for mistakes, recognize the truth the mirror shows them and enhance the value of others.

Humility is one of the reasons Welker is in Miami. As a player, he led the NFL in receptions three times, set the Patriots’ franchise record for receiving yards in a season and was a four-time All-Pro. Some consider him a Hall of Fame candidate. He made more than $40 million as a player, according to Spotrac.

When he took his first coaching job as an offensive assistant with the Texans in 2017, Welker found himself collating papers in notebooks. He could have been watching his young children build castles on a white sand beach, but Welker embraced the opportunity to work like an intern.

“What’s cool about Wes is he’s achieved such greatness as a player, but I got to see him as a coach wanting to do things the right way,” says McDaniel, who helped guide Welker when he became the 49ers wide receivers coach after two years with the Texans. “He didn’t feel entitled at all. He doesn’t give a sh*t about his player accolades. He’s humble. It’s the exact way I want people to approach coaching a position. He can be a flag bearer for the coaching staff.”

McDaniel says he isn’t sure he could have handled himself so humbly if he had achieved what Welker did on the field.

There is evidence to the contrary.

Understand this about McDaniel: when he looks at video of a play, he sees things others don’t — missed opportunities, possibilities, yesterdays and tomorrows. He has a knack for coming up with the cleanest dirtiest play imaginable. Mostert calls him a mastermind. Kyle Shanahan says he is one of the smartest coaches he has been around. Former wide receiver Andrew Hawkins, who played for him on the Browns, referred to him as a savant.

Yet McDaniel doesn’t act like he’s smarter than anyone. He doesn’t demand attention when he walks into a room. Sometimes, you have to crane your neck to hear his words.

“He’s around a lot, but he doesn’t say a lot,” Embree says. “He just soaks it all in and you didn’t even realize he was there. I love that he doesn’t take himself so seriously.”

Self-doubt isn’t the reason McDaniel is modest. His confidence is evident in the fearlessness and audacity in his coaching decisions.

“The No. 1 quality with him for me is he’s willing to put it all out there,” Embree says. “He will try things, come up with things, like (49ers offensive tackle) Trent Williams on a jet-sweep motion. He’s not afraid to fail, to have egg all over his face. I love that about him.”

McDaniel wants a team that is resilient.

Teams worth celebrating, he has learned, have to overcome. Moreover, McDaniel has a deep, personal appreciation for resolve borne of the fall.

If the steps of his life are retraced, empty vodka bottles will be found where empty vodka bottles do not belong. In his first decade of coaching, McDaniel was followed by the demon of alcohol dependency. Then, in 2016, he spent three weeks in a rehab center. Turned out depression was fueling his dependency. It’s now been six years on the street’s sunny side.

One of his mantras is, “Adversity is opportunity.” On the Dolphins, McDaniel has surrounded himself with others who understand resolve and survival.

A seventh-round pick out of Montana State who changed teams seven times over nine years, Person knew he was near the end in 2019. He started the first 14 games of the season for the 49ers, playing through five or more stingers a game and dealing with a left arm he couldn’t lift above his shoulder. Person persevered.

“It was one of those deals where you were going to have to tell me I couldn’t play anymore,” he says. “I’m not going to come out even if it’s to my detriment just because my neck hurts and I’m getting some stingers. You have a job. If you are able to do it, you’re going to do it.”

His performance declined though, and Person was forced to sit for the last two regular-season games. After some rest, he won his job back for the playoffs. In postseason wins against the Vikings and Packers and the Super Bowl loss to the Chiefs, Person played as well as he ever played in his career.

“He was his best version of himself when his body was shutting down,” McDaniel says with admiration. “He was as good or better than he was when he was in the best shape of his life.”

Mostert is trying to return from a knee injury that ended his 2021 season after two carries. He thought he was going to run for 2,500 yards last season. If his history is a guide, his comeback will be grand. He once shot himself in the foot — literally. At some point between diapers and kindergarten, Mostert got his hands on his father’s gun and accidentally fired it at his toe.

In the NFL, Mostert has been cut six times. McDaniel is sure of one thing — Mostert will give all he has.

“I always can count on his return from whatever hardship, in a better version,” the coach says.

Mostert has a similar belief about his coach.

“You are going to see that resilience come out of him, too,” he says. “He’s been tried in his career.”

If the rest of the Dolphins are as resilient, they will surprise people.

And if the Dolphins are everything McDaniel wants them to be, they could be a team unlike any other.

(Top photo: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)