MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Mike McDaniel and his Miami Dolphins passed an essential test Sunday.
They tried. Hard.
More important than their Week 16 result — a 29-17 victory over the wounded San Francisco 49ers — the Dolphins showed that they weren’t mailing it in after their season-wrecking loss to the Houston Texans the Sunday before.
“Even when things weren’t going our way, we always thought we were a playoff team,” said Dolphins cornerback Kader Kohou, whose interception off Brock Purdy just inside the two-minute warning sealed the game.
“There’s not any thoughts in our mind about Cancun or anything like that. We’re still thinking about the playoffs and we’re just trying to win every game.”
And because they played with that mindset Sunday, Dolphins owner Stephen Ross should retain McDaniel for a fourth season. But that decision must come with stipulations.
Miami Dolphins Should Bring Back Mike McDaniel in 2025
We’ve already written that the Dolphins should part ways with Chris Grier after this season, and Sunday’s season-saving win doesn’t change that.
The Dolphins have a talent and depth deficit compared to the NFL’s best teams, and Grier — an honorable and decent man — hasn’t been able to figure it out in the six years he’s had roster control.
But McDaniel is far from blameless in this 7-8 Dolphins season.
The offense needs to be simplified. Big changes are needed on special teams. And the Dolphins need a tougher DNA that travels.
Sunday’s win ensured a fifth consecutive home winning season for the Dolphins. But they’re just 2-5 on the road this year and 9-17 (including playoffs) in McDaniel’s three years as Dolphins coach.
“Naturally you have to win in all atmospheres and against all different opponents,” McDaniel said. “But the bigger thing is, when you’re trying to play football so that in the inevitable situation that you face every season, an elimination game, whether it’s to get in the playoffs or it’s in the playoffs, you want to be tooled with a team that can succeed or execute in those types of situations.
“I think the list is long when you’re talking about all the things that this team has to do that it has yet to do, but the formula is the same. You’re in a stadium, there’s two football teams, and you have to be the best one with the most points that day.
“I think that mindset, for all the stuff to go on during the course of the year, for the naysayers to be aplenty, I was just proud of this effort and proud of the guys’ effort in general. And that gives you a chance to win December football.”
A Make-or-Break Offseason
Whenever this frustrating, disappointing Dolphins season ends, McDaniel must be open to whatever changes are necessary to end the team’s quarter-century playoff victory drought.
And we think he will be. He has spoken often about how this is his dream job. He has every incentive to do what’s needed to keep it.
But he’s working from a position of strength. Most importantly: He has a quarterback (Tua Tagovailoa) that — with the right help around him — can win a lot of games. And that QB by all indications has his back.
“I think he’s done a great job,” Tagovailoa said Sunday. “I think criticism comes with the job, whether you’re a head coach, whether you’re a player, and it comes at different types of levels of it, right?
“Some are more severe than others, but that’s what it comes with. We understand, when we signed up to play football, that that’s what it was. It is what it is at the end of the day. It is what it is. We just love football. We love to do this.
“We don’t take this for granted, that’s for sure, and I think that’s been the message to a lot of the guys in the locker room is like you can remember a time when you were a kid, when you were in high school, when you were in college, you wanted to be an NFL football player, and now you got that opportunity. Regardless of the circumstances that you’re in, you get to play for an NFL football team, and that’s something special.”
Assuming the Dolphins keep that mindset over the season’s final two weeks, McDaniel deserves another chance to get things right.