On his path to becoming the head coach of the Miami Dolphins, Mike McDaniel looks back.
Sunday night’s NFL games continue with the Miami Dolphins taking on the Buffalo Bills, with coverage beginning at 5 p.m. and kickoff coming at 6 p.m. on Sky Sports.
The New England Patriots then play the Dallas Cowboys, and the Kansas City Chiefs play the New York Jets.
The new face of the NFL head coach, Mike McDaniel, is refreshing. He is a schematic nerd, a little awkward, and full of eccentricities.
In addition to being a brilliant football mind, he is also one of the league’s friendliest managers of men.
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He has shaped the Miami Dolphins into an offensive powerhouse and contenders in his first head coaching position, a long-awaited top position that he earned after years of gaining experience working behind the scenes in some of the most effective systems in the league.
Being an expert in football’s Xs and Os is one thing; teaching that knowledge to a whole team of players is quite another.
So far, so good for a coach whose team just defeated the Denver Broncos by scoring 70 points and amassing over 700 yards of offense.
According to McDaniel, there are numerous similarities in the human experience.
“And I believe that, from the perspective of a coaching staff, being able to experience the NFL journey allowed you to personally experience a wide range of events as well as to witness a wide range of events. And it is apparent how connected everything is.
“What I was very fortunate to have encountered was having to serve as a coach at a young age at the NFL level. I was pretty young, having started my first two jobs at the ages of 22 and 23.
You are aware from the beginning that “hey, I don’t exactly look the part. I had better be able to assist a player, then.
As you turn the page, you come to understand that if you can assist them, they don’t care how it appears. And that was very important to me.
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With 412 receiving yards and four touchdowns through three games of the 2023 season, Tyreek Hill has lit up the NFL.
McDaniel spent five years working with Kyle Shanahan at the San Francisco 49ers, where he played a key role in one of the NFL’s most inventive rushing attacks, before beginning his career with the Dolphins.
Early in his career, he worked for Mike Shanahan as a quality control coach, a position that typically requires long first-in-last-out hours of film analysis, play design creation, data logging, and being ready to communicate any of the aforementioned to their staff upon request. They are the ultimate observer whose work is crucial to the smooth operation of a whole team.
McDaniel described his path from quality control to head coach as “there’s a long list of people you have to trick.”.
Everyone follows their own path.
According to your life and coaching experience, being a quality control coach is a very significant position.
It’s also extremely challenging. And I think the most important thing—the only thing that gives me a chance to have you participate in this interview as a head coach—is to make sure that you are fully committed to your work.
NFL Week Three highlights from the Denver Broncos’ game against the Miami Dolphins.
“With anyone who pursues that career path, you need to be surrounded by very, very special people who can teach you the right way.
Therefore, you must put in a lot of personal effort and be fortunate.
My first boss, Hall of Famer Mike Shanahan, was fortunate enough to be my boss.
Then comes Kyle Shanahan, arguably the best offensive mind of our generation and one of the most inventive football coaches.
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McDaniel devoted his time to being the unfiltered football nerd, becoming familiar with every nuance and idea and giving them his own spin.
Over the course of his career, he collaborated with some of the most renowned offensive coaches in history.
Even so, he acknowledges that there was no way he could have been fully ready for life at the head of the table.
The Her Huddle team debates whether the Miami Dolphins are the early favorites to win the Super Bowl following their convincing victory over the Denver Broncos.
He claimed, “You think you know everything about the job, and I really did because I had studied it so closely.
“I’ve been studying these people every year of my career, highly successful experts in the field, and I really, really had every reason to want to learn from them.
Then, for five years, I was able to work right alongside a head coach in Kyle Shanahan.
After that, it’s still different; you can’t truly appreciate its scope until you put it into practice.
“How many people I could truly reach didn’t really matter to me personally.
That’s why it was fascinating.
In the end, the most important lesson I learned was that there would still be curveballs.