MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — The Miami Dolphins under Mike McDaniel simply haven’t been tough enough.
It’s not just us saying it. There is no shortage of testimonials from players with first-hand experience.
Just ask Tyreek Hill. Or Jordan Poyer. Or DeShon Elliott. Or most recently, Jordyn Brooks, who blasted his own team in the locker room after Miami’s Thanksgiving night loss in frigid Green Bay.
Mike McDaniel’s Miami Dolphins Fail To Meet Moment
“Simple as that, I thought we were soft today,” Brooks said. “I don’t know if guys was too cold. … I don’t know what it was. I feel like the elements played a part in how we played as a group, and that was the result that we got.”
Brooks’ honesty was borne out of frustration. Nearly two-dozen Dolphins missed tackles that resulted in over 100 free yards for the Packers.
But what should be most exasperating: Last Thursday’s failure to launch has been the rule, not the exception, in the McDaniel Era.
When things are good, they’re great. But when things are bad, they’re awful. The stats confirm what the eyes have told us.
The Dolphins under McDaniel are 10-14 (including the playoffs) when the opponent scores first, including 1-5 this year.
They’re 5-16 against opponents who finished the season with a winning record (average margin of defeat: 9.5) and 1-6 when the temperature at kickoff is 50 or below (average margin of defeat: 8.6).
Which raises the most important question of the entire last three years:
Are the Dolphins a reflection of their head coach, who for all of his strengths (particularly play-calling and relating to his players) is not a stereotypical alpha?
Stephen Ross and the rest of the people who run the Dolphins, of course, knew this when they hired him. But hopes that he would grow into the job have, at this point, not come to fruition.
“I think holding people accountable is part of how as a coach you can impact toughness,” McDaniel said Wednesday. “I think overall, it’s a violent, competitive sport that when things don’t go your way, a lot of things get thrown out there. Who’s to say who’s right or wrong?
“If you disagree with that sentiment, to me, there’s only one emotional reaction, and that’s to focus on proving that wrong. But to sit here and debate — you know, tough, not tough. All I know is dudes are aggressively tackling each other, taking on hits.
“And I assess the tape because that, to me, is fact. You could hypothesize innumerable amounts of things, whether it’s player, coach, all that. … If you’re worried about the toughness of your team, to me, you study the effort, intentionality, and how people are playing when things are tough, when things are down.”
McDaniel went on to say that the team’s tackling woes in Green Bay were due to players not running through tackles but instead trying to take down Packers with a glancing blow.
To us, that’s more of an indictment than an exoneration. It suggests that for whatever reason — the cold, the short week, the opponent — the Dolphins were not ready for the moment.
And that’s been a sad fact of life during the biggest moments of his tenure as Dolphins coach.
As Ross considers what to do next after what appears to be yet another failed rebuild, he must ask himself and those in prominent roles of the organization the following:
Can McDaniel seize control of a locker room that has largely been asked to self-police during his three years in Miami?
“The way that I look at it, it comes from individuals and collectively you gotta all have that same mindset,” Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa said Wednesday. “That’s why we have team football. That’s why you’re in team sports. I think you gotta look at it as are you mentally tough and are you physically tough?
“They have to go hand-in-hand and if one of those things has a kink in it, you know, it could go one way or the other.”
