Mike McDaniel Was the First Casualty of the Harbaugh Wars

Expect the former Dolphins coach to now be a top candidate or break the bank as an offensive coordinator.

Mike McDaniel was fired after four seasons in Miami. / Sam Navarro-Imagn Images

The opening salvo in the Harbaugh Wars has seemingly been fired, and not everyone assuming the Giants would land the former Ravens head coach saw the Dolphins moving on from their head coach as the second phase of their general manager search got underway in earnest (and the candidate pool including a general manager that has Harbaugh ties). 

This, as the Giants are holding on to their incumbent GM.

At least that’s how the coaching carousel looks Thursday morning, minutes after the Dolphins parted ways with head coach Mike McDaniel (after having McDaniel speak at a press conference as head coach of the Dolphins two days ago). Now for the required legalese: I think John Harbaugh could still go to the Giants. I think Miami could end up going in a different direction, and merely the presence of Harbaugh on the market could have impacted where the Dolphins saw themselves as an organization and where they wanted to go. Miami would be putting the organization at a major disadvantage if it did not allow its new general manager, whomever that person might be, to have a voice in the process. Also, the general manager candidate the Dolphins are interviewing with ties to Harbaugh, Chad Alexander, was confirmed as a candidate before the news of Harbaugh’s firing stunned the NFL. 

While the entire field looks like a half-completed premium LEGO set that’s been stomped on by a Kodiak bear, we must balance that thought with this idea: It would be stunning to assume that Stephen Ross—an owner who has in the past eyed both Harbaugh’s brother and Sean Payton, another seasoned coach with Super Bowl credentials—would not at the very least be intrigued by the option. Enough to dismiss a head coach for whom, by all indications, he had a great deal of respect. 

That’s an important pretext to the story of McDaniel but, at least in this space, is not the entire story. I’ll maintain that McDaniel was the best hire Ross could have made at the time (2022) and if the team wasn’t caught in a Daniel Jones–ian rock and a hard place with Tua Tagovailoa (performing well at the absolute perfect time to come up for a market extension during a time when the organization wasn’t in position to draft a successor), we’d be talking about McDaniel as one of the entrenched coaches in the NFL. 

In 2023, while working on a Sports Illustrated magazine cover story about the inner-workings of the Dolphins, I was in a small hallway between the team’s media room and the corridor to the coaches’ offices. I asked McDaniel about his support staff—the IT workers, security guards and equipment managers—and he gave an analogy about a guitarist and his importance to the rest of a band. 

After turning off my recorder, I told McDaniel, then early in his second season, that I’d never heard a staff talk about their head coach the way people talked about him. It was almost protective and familial; an attachment you would have for the latchkey kid cousin who always had dinner at your house. 

“Yeah, well,” McDaniel said, with a tired smile, “I give great Christmas bonuses.” 

This little pocket of humility summed up the now former Dolphins coach well. His momentary revolution in the NFL was one of kindness and being yourself. This came in a world where so many people assume a position of power or leadership and immediately download a thumb drive of the job’s worst, most banal or downright destructive impulses. McDaniel didn’t dress like other coaches, he didn’t answer questions like other coaches and, clearly in the case of the once and now possibly again broken Tagovailoa, he didn’t relate to quarterbacks like other coaches (even though Tagovailoa ultimately regressed as the talent pool on the roster became unsustainably bad, McDaniel had him ninth one year in MVP voting and fifth the following year in Comeback Player of the Year voting). 

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At this very moment, two things can be true at once: 

One is that McDaniel will get head coaching interviews. He made the playoffs twice in four seasons, finishing with a 35–33 record. If he’s not a serious candidate in Atlanta and Cleveland, two places where McDaniel has worked before, I would be stunned. McDaniel could also have a Brian Flores–like presence over the offseason as a coordinator if he wanted a year to recharge while still breaking the bank for teams desperate to score an offensive upgrade. With former teammates such as Robert Saleh on the market as viable head coaching candidates and an opening to work with Jayden Daniels in Washington (and one of McDaniel’s biggest mentors and champions, Dan Quinn), McDaniel will be a key swing piece that could cause a major impact on this hiring cycle. 

Another is that Harbaugh is worth chasing if you’re the Dolphins. There’s a reason this team fired its general manager first and waited on firing McDaniel. The issues with the team are less schematic than they are macro in terms of how the Dolphins identify talent and pipeline it onto the playing field. 

McDaniel wasn’t going to win consistently in Miami without that pipeline of talent (at least not at the level Ross, who is 85 and wants a Super Bowl, would like to see). Harbaugh, at the very least, offers something closer to bringing it all to fruition. Or inspire that idea in an owner desperate for a Mike Vrabel–like turnaround.

In many ways, McDaniel’s firing illustrates the NFL at its most desperate and chaotic. Plots, real or imagined. Schemes executed on the fly. But it will also be the precursor to what we know is true: Coaches as good as McDaniel don’t simply disappear. He went from donning the kind of presence that made us all doubt he was a fit to now maybe being considered a fit almost everywhere, save for the place that just let him go to chase another dream. 

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