49ers OC Mike McDaniel officially named head coach of the Miami Dolphins

[Spider-Dan]

It's official.



Discuss.

[Dave Gray]

I really don't know anything about this guy, which is good, I guess.  I hope he likes to play offense.

[pondwater]

I really don't know anything about this guy, which is good, I guess.  I hope he likes to play offense.

I guess since he likes smoking pot he can get the whole team baked AF. Then McDaniel can take the McDolphins to the McDonalds for some munchies LMAO....

[Spider-Dan]

As far as my own opinion:

I thought McDaniel was the worst option in the poll from the other thread - the second-worst option, Kellen Moore (also a Dolphins HC finalist), at least calls the plays - but at least Mike McDaniel is a better choice than the worst head coaching hire this round: Josh McDaniels.  Silver linings, I suppose.

I'm disappointed to see the Dolphins go with yet another candidate with zero head coaching experience, and I'm doubly disappointed to see them repeat the decision they made with Joe Philbin in hiring an "offensive coordinator" that doesn't even call plays.  But given the developments of the last week, this is probably the best MIA could do.  There should have been a larger focus on HC experience from the start of the search; now you lie in the bed you made.

[EDGECRUSHER]

I think McDaniel is a brilliant offensive mind who Kyle Shanahan has taken everywhere with him, but just like Flores, he is not a leader of men. We can get past the age part of being just 37, but he is clearly a lab geek. More like the players best friend then someone who can move their ass to do better. Flores obviously had a hard time with that due to personality defects and I think McDaniels will be the same, albeit the nice guy version.

Still, I can't deny how highly praised he is around the league. With guys like Philbin, Gase and Flores, they didn't really come with huge praise. McDaniels does so there is SOME optimism even though I think we fucked up this hiring process just like we do everything else. Genuinely hopeful though that he can turn around the O-Line, run game and thus, Tua.

9-8 team with lots of cap space and decent talent already? My ceiling for this season is 12 wins and my floor is 7. I genuinely believe our problem is lack of coaching so let's pray we found our next Shula.

[CF DolFan]

Still, I can't deny how highly praised he is around the league.

So was Gase and Philbin.

I think this is the 7th consecutive coach we have hired without head coaching experince. Crazier people would think that's the definition of insanity but us homers know this was the right move because our great GM says so. That's not an attack on anyone but a reflextion of how I feel today. Pretty bummed about this organization. The freaking Jags accidently get Pederson and we get a guy no one else had interest in. Lord knows we've failed every single time we've tried to out smart other people with oour picks but this is the one I'm sure.

[EDGECRUSHER]

So was Gase and Philbin.

I think this is the 7th consecutive coach we have hired without head coaching experince. Crazier people would think that's the definition of insanity but us homers know this was the right move because our great GM says so. That's not an attack on anyone but a reflextion of how I feel today. Pretty bummed about this organization. The freaking Jags accidently get Pederson and we get a guy no one else had interest in. Lord knows we've failed every single time we've tried to out smart other people with oour picks but this is the one I'm sure.

We're both in agreement that we didn't want another first time HC and there were far better options out there. However, the praise for Gase and Philbin was all a mirage to anyone who paid attention. Working with Peyton Manning in Denver isn't exactly hard and Jay Cutler, for all of his mopeyness and hysterical divorce rumors, is a good QB. He was never a "QB Whisperer". Philbin had Aaron Rodgers so enough said.

McDaniel seems to have a much better resume with worse QB options. I will definitely give him the benefit of the doubt but I have no delusions. It would be more surprising if he succeeded than if he failed. This is the same team that quit on Flores for half the year and towards the end, don't see how some 37 year old Soylent drinker is going to get them pumped for Buffalo.

[Tenshot13]

First off, for anyone making the mistake it's McDaniel not McDaniels.  Secondly, the guy has been around football his entire life.  He started as a ball boy, then the bottom of the bottom and worked his way up from there.  For anyone who cares, he is biracial, something that completely embarrassed Deadspin as they made an entire article about how he is just another white head coaching candidate.  He graduated from Yale, so you know he's extremely smart.  Players absolutely love him, Kittle tried to get language in his contract that McDaniel could never leave (half joking I'm sure).  The thing about him not calling plays is not entirely true, there are times he calls plays and the niners have said it's more of a collaborative process then you would think.  His specialty regards the run game and everyone on the field being responsible for their blocks including WRs, something that would tailor to Tua well as it won't all be on him and maybe we can finally get a run game.  He is not a Gase or Philbin, those guys had a lot more to work with to show they were "gurus" before taking head coaching positions.  Other than him being a first year head coach, there isn't much to knock the guy on.  He was my favorite candidate after Harbaugh, so y'all should get on board, the majority of the Dolphins fan base if very excited about this hire.  One other thing, fwiw, the Cowboys fans want Moore gone, niners fans are pissed McDaniel is gone.

He seems like a real coach in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev3Gm9zhlfg&ab_channel=TheQBSchool

[Fau Teixeira]

The nickname i saw already was "Bong Shula" .. i'll take it

[EDGECRUSHER]

^^^

Don't know why Kellen Moore at 33 was getting serious HC interviews. Really glad we didn't hire him but it sucks that he was even considered.

[CF DolFan]

I see all the possible upsides to the guys but since we've literally never had anyone with "potential" work out it's pretty hard for me to buy into the hype right now. I just really have no confidence in Chris Grier with his track record.

[Dolfanalyst]

What I find so interesting about this guy is that he's never played a down of football at any level, and that his calling card is his innovation and ingenuity.

What that means from my vantage point is that he's climbed the ladder of his profession based primarily on intelligence. He's a graduate of Yale University, and Yale certainly doesn't admit morons. Whatever morons they may admit by mistake likely don't graduate. In 2021 Yale had 46,905 applicants for admission to the university and accepted 2,169, a lowly acceptance rate of just 4.6%. Compare that to Michigan for example, which had an acceptance rate of 26%. Ohio State 69%. Alabama a whopping 83%. The top Ivy League schools like Yale are admitting only the cream of the crop. I suspect that in McDaniel's childhood and adolescence he was recognized as a gifted student and at least somewhat of an intellectual prodigy.

Now translate that to what he appears to have become passionate about -- coaching football. What you have here is McDaniel's career having consisted largely of using his intelligence to dissect the game and discover and implement competitive advantages for the teams he's coached. Someone's doing that with an IQ of let's say 140 (a guess) is entirely different from a former football Bubba's doing it with an IQ of just ~100 (which is average and expected).

At any rate, it's a very intriguing hire to me, as it marks a transition from "football experience" to mere intelligence as the calling card for the coach. The risk a team runs in hiring a coach of that nature is that he coaches from sort of an "ivory tower" and can't relate to the players as they play the game he never played. From all accounts that hasn't happened, however, as players of McDaniel's have raved about how he relates to them and puts them in position to maximize their performance and win.

So we potentially have the best of all worlds here -- a guy the players want to play hard for because he relates well to them and puts them in position to win, while implementing competitive advantages he's discovered via his intelligence.

I'll be on the edge of my seat to see how this team takes the field and plays next year.

[CF DolFan]

What I find so interesting about this guy is that he's never played a down of football at any level, and that his calling card is his innovation and ingenuity.

He played WR at Yale.

https://yalebulldogs.com/sports/football/roster/michael-l--mcdaniel/10402

McDaniel was originally born in Aurora, Colorado in 1983. He graduated from Smoky Hill High School in 2001, choosing to attend Yale University while being a member of the football team and studying history.[1]

[DenverFinFan]

He’s an interesting guy and better than Moore, I don’t have any faith in this franchise or the league atm so we will see I guess.

[EDGECRUSHER]

He’s an interesting guy and better than Moore, I don’t have any faith in this franchise or the league atm so we will see I guess.

The beauty of our team right now is that there is no "wait and see". We are 9-8, have a lot of cap space and were criminally under coached. If we go 7-10 this year, he's not the guy and should be fired immediately. We aren't rebuilding, we are going for the division next year. It's just a few more wins, not tripling our total. From Day 1, he has no excuses so we will know if he's the man in Year 1.