Miami Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel has had better days on the job than he had on Thursday, October 30 against the Baltimore Ravens.
Not only did the Dolphins lose, 28-6, but the hometown crowd booed McDaniel, 42, and his team, as he became increasingly irate with his squad, which fell to 2-7 on the season.
“You want to fix stuff, and yeah, it sucks. That sucks,” he told reporters after the game. “All of that does. But I think it’s a pretty consistent formula of fans enjoy winning and so our expectation is that we have to do the work and do the right things for fans to enjoy the experience and unfortunately, we didn’t do that tonight, so we got to get back to work to give them something to cheer about.”
McDaniel’s sideline antics went viral on Thursday, when one of his players was called for a false start as the team was trying to convert a crucial 4th-and-1 early in the game. He tore his headset off and began shouting at his team.
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The penalty resulted in a five-yard loss, forcing the Dolphins instead to go for a 35-yard field goal, which kicker Riley Patterson missed.
“We’ve been putting such an emphasis on all things related to our operation,” McDaniel said. “And in a critical fourth-and-1, where we’re pretty fired up about the defensive look, it was what we were calling the play for.”
He added that his anger was only at his own team for not paying with discipline.
“That’s, flat-out, a controllable that our team knows that keeps you from winning,” he said. “I was irate at nothing but our self-inflicted wound.”
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The Dolphins will play again on Sunday, November 9 when they host the Buffalo Bills. It is unclear, however, who will be coaching the team at that point. McDaniel was believed to be on the hot seat even before the team’s blowout loss to the Ravens, and the team is undeniably trending in the wrong direction.
Miami made the playoffs each of McDaniel’s first two seasons before missing out in 2024 with an 8-9 record. Now, the team is miles from the playoff picture and parted ways with general manager Chris Grier on Friday, October 31.
McDaniel arrived in Miami in 2022 after serving as a coordinator for the San Francisco 49ers the previous five seasons. With the head coach working on staffs for five other NFL teams before that, he has had his wife, Katie, traveling by his side the whole time.
The couple married in 2014 and welcomed daughter Alya in 2020.
In his first season with the Dolphins, McDaniel cracked a joke about his home life ahead of his first bye week.
“I’m a leader by example. I’m going to show these guys how to rest my butt off, and then when I’m not asleep, I’ll be daddying and husbanding,” he quipped to Sports Illustrated at the time. “I’ll have some honey-dos. I’ll do my chores, because I won’t want to be in the doghouse. I might kind of, at the end of the week, just kind of skirt some of those honey-dos, just knowing that there won’t be ramifications because I’ll be back at work. But until then, I’m all right.”
The 2025 Dolphins won’t get their bye until November 23. Until then, McDaniel will need to do his best to climb out of the doghouse.
