Mike McDaniel has been on the hot seat since the end of the 2024 campaign. While we recently heard that Dolphins owner Stephen Ross was willing to be patient with his head coach, it sounds like that patience may quickly be wearing thin. According to Tony Pauline of Sportskeeda.com, frustrations are mounting following another Dolphins loss, this time to the Panthers on Sunday. The head coach himself admitted after the game that his owner isn’t happy with the team’s performance, and it doesn’t sound like McDaniel has much longer to right the ship.
A source told Pauline that Ross will likely give it two or three more games before pulling the trigger on a firing. That same source indicated before the season that McDaniel may only have a couple of months to fight for his job. It’s uncertain what the coach could exactly do to keep his gig, but it’s assumed that he’ll have to secure at least a couple of wins in upcoming matchups with the Chargers, Browns, and Falcons.
There’s been plenty of speculation surrounding McDaniel’s job security since the end of the 2024 season. While the 42-year-old represents one of the franchise’s most successful hires, the situation also took a turn for the worse in 2024. While the team still managed to finish 8-9, there were plenty of reports about disfunction within the locker room, with sources criticizing the coach’s willingness to let the likes of Jalen Ramsey and Tyreek Hill “walk all over” him. As a result, McDaniel was deemed a candidate to be the first canned coach of the 2025 campaign.
If the Dolphins do eventually move off McDaniel, Pauline says it’s assumed the organization will pursue more of a “disciplinarian” type of head coach, with the source describing a veteran in the “Dan Quinn mold.” Interestingly, one name that’s popped up is former AFC East foe Rex Ryan. The former Jets head coach pushed for that same gig this offseason but wasn’t hired, and he’s remained in his current role as an ESPN analyst.
Ryan would certainly fit the team’s desire for a veteran head coach, although he wouldn’t necessarily fit their desire for a disciplinarian. According to sources, the team would still be receptive to a defensive-minded coach like Ryan, as long as he was paired with a talented offensive coordinator who could maximize Tua Tagovailoa‘s production.
General manager Chris Grier has also found himself on the hot seat, and while Ross gave the executive a vote of confidence following the 2024 season, the public declaration was a clear warning in and of itself. A source told Pauline that there’s no guarantee that McDaniel and Grier are a package deal. In other words, just because the head coach may be sent packing, it doesn’t necessarily mean the GM will be out of a job.
If they don’t fire Grier, there’s no point in firing McDaniel.
Seems like the team needs a pretty full reset, but Grier has earned his pink slip more than McDaniel.
They have talent, but can’t win games. Waller looks great. MacDaniel can’t control the locker room. Hill, Ramsey, and who knows how many other players are out of control. They had a nice finesse offense working for awhile, but not anymore. Letting a backup RB run all over the field was embarrassing last week against a team that isn’t strong and full of injuries. I’d love to know why Fangio left too. Teams play like their HC, the Dolphins play soft. I called this over the summer. MacDaniel isn’t making it to the end of the season. That game vs Dallas when Tua threw the INT on what should’ve been the game winning drive killed their season. They were better off with Flores.
lol yes you know all about their locker room.
Defending MacDaniel as much as you have isn’t looking that good, is it?
You were replying to a comment where I said it seems like they need a pretty full reset. What more do you want from me? I stand by Grier deserving more blame for the spot they’re in than McDaniel. I don’t think McDaniel has been put in the best spots, but that doesn’t mean I think he’s been a great head coach either.
You both make good points. I agree with Oof, though, that Grier by default bears more blame due to his MUCH longer tenure in his spot, and his pretty costly failures in hitting home runs with some of the high end capitol that Miami has gained over the years. Grier got them some good picks, but missed with a lot of them. He’s not been all bad, but he couldn’t get the team over the hump and over time it gets stale.
McDaniel can scheme well, but he doesn’t appear to have control over his team. It’s hard to validate the second statement from the outside, of course, but that’s what’s suggested. I disagree that Miami was better off with Flores, though. Flores never made the playoffs, and 2022 and 2023 were back to back playoff seasons with McDaniel. McDaniel at least had them as legitimate contenders at one point…before their disappointing collapse. That was an improvement, even if it ended poorly. I still assign him blame for not capitalizing on those playoff years, but if I had to pick which of the two I’d more responsible for the disappointment, I’d say Grier.
Flores did have a harder job, since his first year they did a scorched earth teardown of the roster.
As for Grier and McDaniel, I think the hard truth for both of them is that the team went all-in for the 2023 season. After that fell short, they lost Wilkins, Hunt, Van Ginkel, among others, and had age and injuries set in for a bunch of others.
Now the team has disastrously little talent on rookie deals, in large part because Grier traded away so many picks, even just to trade up in the draft, which he bafflingly still did this year. The Chubb trade and contract were malpractice. The man’s been GM since five days before they hired Adam Gase. He’s gotten far too many chances already.
I don’t think there’s much justification to keep McDaniel after this year and he’s definitely had his teams fall apart in tough moments, but he’s never had sufficient line talent to work with and he was brought in first and foremost to fix a broken Tua. I don’t think anyone could have done much better on that front, while Tua’s limitations and injuries have put a cap on what the team can do.
Ehhh Flores may have done his teardown and build up, but it didn’t benefit the current iteration of the team much. Granted, it was tougher, but McDaniel’s years saw some degree of changeover from the Flores years, too. Both the offense and defense completely changed philosophically. The players also changed in accordance with that. The McDaniel Dolphins retained a few players, and Flores deserves some credit for getting winning records out of what he had, but he also actively hurt the offense with his coaching style and was pretty inflexible schematically in terms of tailoring to his players.
I am absolutely not saying that he was a complete failure, but I do think also that he held the team back in other ways. I don’t think that it was enough to be fired, and he maybe could have improved on his start, but I also think that we forget some of the disadvantages in light of his successful turnaround in Minnesota (which may actually get him another chance later down the road). He did a lot of things worth respecting, but the early years of the McDaniel regime were much more positive than the Flores tenure. The problem with McDaniel was that he ended up hitting a wall, and couldn’t figure out how to rebound and make his team less predictable.
I’m certainly not saying Flores was a great head coach in Miami, but it was pretty incredible that they were as feisty as they were that first year when the teardown left that roster for dead. And I do think the talent drain in the last two years has been pretty severe.
I can agree with that, especially the latter. I agree that the Chubb was the best thing that could have happened, too…for Denver.
I thought so at the time, too, but I didn’t think that he’d be THAT much of nonfactor in Miami.
Two terrible double-whammies at once. He cost a first round pick AND a big contract. He had disappointing production most of his career AND a serious injury history. AND that trade allowed Denver to acquire Sean Payton.
So the source is the GM?
It’s only been 24 years since the last playoff win, what’s another 24?
The ultimate worst case scenario would be to even consider that windbag Ryan
Jets luck would be Rex head coaching Miami and having greater success than Aaron Glenn.
No NFL club is hiring an ESPN talking head who didn’t make it through a second full season in Buffalo.
Urban Meyer was an NFL head coach. Things can happen.
A guy who wears capris shouldn’t be coaching men? The soccer capri sweats were bad enough then he comes out wearing his wife’s capris. Apologies to any of you who wear capris. You need to leave football and go to soccer. I am serious real men don’t wear women’s pants.
Or Gloria Vanderbilt glasses
Sure why not throw the human equivalent of bacon grease in Rex Ryan onto this roaring dumpster fire 🔥
This made me laugh more than it should’ve
Bacon grease is awesome man!
That is insulting to bacon grease!
When the smoke clear,MR BELICHEK will be the next head coach he and ROSS are very close friends.
Not with Turndaballovah behind Center.
Coach Bill isn’t going anywhere that requires a full rebuild at the most key positions.
I’m not even what anyone would call a “Coach Bill Fan”; especially if he has as much autonomy as he ended up with in NE
The current reality is that player salaries have escalated to the point where they have significant influence. This applies primarily to the QB position but the era when head coaches could just bully the star athletes into submission is history. I suspect a Rex Ryan hire would result in a quick player rebellion.
100% this!
Add to this the other 100% fact:
Rex stood on the shoulders of Buddy Ryan and miraculously was able to sell himself as Bill Parcells 2.0 when he’s actually just another loud mouth nepo-goofball
Oh please please please hire Rex.
The fact that his name was mentioned is funny enough.
Hire Rex Ryan? Losing record as head coach with Jets and Bills before getting fired. Makes no sense at all. He hasn’t coach in 10 years. Not a chance, but again we have one of the dumb owners. Cost his team a #1 draft choice for tampering.