MIAMI GARDENS — In the end, the Miami Dolphins did the smart thing, the right thing, and the only thing that made sense – they fired coach Mike McDaniel.
The McDaniel firing needed to be done, as I wrote after the 27-24 Carolina loss on Oct. 5.
McDaniel is a class act. But his teams continually underachieved and disappointed. Period. His teams were 5-22 (.185) against playoff teams and 30-11 (.732) against non-playoff teams. McDaniel never won a playoff game while compiling a 35-33 record (.515), 35-35 including going 0-2 in postseason games.
With McDaniel gone, owner Stephen Ross and the organization can make a clean sweep of this era – general manager (Chris Grier), coach (McDaniel) and quarterback (Tua Tagovailoa). It failed. Get out the broom for all of them. And we’ll include speedy wide receiver Tyreek Hill in that group, too.
Make no mistake, sweeping changes must be made.
Most of all, the Dolphins need a winning mentality. They need to learn to chase what’s real.
Under Grier and McDaniel, the Dolphins mistook pyrite for gold. They thought having the No. 1 offense was an accomplishment. It’s not. It’s a statistic. They thought an 11-win season meant they’d arrived. They thought being popular meant they were good. They handed out contract extensions in 2024 based on those ideas.
The entire thought process of the organization must change.
The Dolphins must demand quality over entertainment, substance over style.
Neither was the case under McDaniel.
I often wondered whether he was a good coach. I knew he wasn’t a bad coach but I was never convinced he was a good coach.
To that end, you had to figure McDaniel needed a small miracle to retain his job this season. It didn’t happen.
The real problem is that the Dolphins allowed the inadequacy to go on for too long.
McDaniel should have been on the hot seat after the Dolphins lost to Kansas City in the 2023 playoffs.
Truth be told, strategic and philosophical changes should have been made after McDaniel’s 2022 debut season.
But whatever.
Now, the Dolphins can get away from the era of speedy, finesse, pretty-boy, social-media-worshipping, attention-hungry football and get on with the business of physicality, grinding and winning.
That’s not a shot at McDaniel. That’s a shot at the entire organization for being stubborn and hard-headed.
If the 2023 Miami Dolphins had the run-first offense and workmanlike mentality of the 2025 Miami Dolphins, Grier, McDaniel and Tua would be preparing for the playoffs instead of licking their wounds.
The Dolphins seemed to have an organization of “yes” men when it came to McDaniel’s big-play passing offense fueled by Tua and Tyreek. No one told McDaniel that his offense, which was his calling card, didn’t work against good teams. So they kept it and suffered the consequences (for example, they averaged a mere 16 points per game vs. playoff teams in 2023).
Looking ahead, you hope the Dolphins understand the big picture and not just the quarterback picture.
You hope the Dolphins’ new general manager and new coach build a complete team in the fashion of San Francisco and Philadelphia.
Look at how those organizations reached Super Bowls with quarterbacks such as Colin Kaepernick, Jimmy Garoppolo and Brock Purdy in the 49ers’ case, and won Super Bowls with Nick Foles and Jalen Hurts in the Eagles’ case.
None of those quarterbacks is likely headed for the Hall of Fame. But they helped their teams reach and win Super Bowls because their teams helped them with had a good defense and/or a good running game. They had good systems, not one-dimensional systems built around one characteristic – speed.
The Dolphins wasted the last few years.
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Grier got McDaniel the best talent the organization had in 20 years and he couldn’t do anything to advance his work. Neither could Tua.
The McDaniel-Tua era was a failure. The Grier era was a failure. The Tyreek era was a failure.
Here’s hoping the Dolphins have learned to recognize and embrace what wins as opposed to what sells tickets, and going further, here’s hoping they hire a general manager and head coach who follow such a blueprint this time around.