McDaniel Trying to Buck Dolphins Trend

Head coach Mike McDaniel will be looking to become the first Miami Dolphins coach to complete four full seasons with the team in more than 20 years

Miami Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel looks on during the first half against the New York Jets at MetLife Stadium in the 2024 season finale. | Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images

Mike McDaniel already has matched what predecessors Brian Flores and Adam Gase did in coaching the Miami Dolphins for three seasons.

But McDaniel will be looking to do something no Dolphins head coach has done in more than 20 years, which is make it through four full seasons.

The coaches who preceded Flores and Gase also coached three full seasons, but both Joe Philbin and Tony Sparano were fired during their fourth season, Philbin after four games and Sparano after 13 games.

The last Dolphins head coach to lead the team four full seasons was Dave Wannstedt, who took over in 2000 and was fired nine games into his fifth season in 2004.

Before Nick Saban was hired to replace Wannstedt for the 2005 season, every Dolphins head coach was on the job for at least four full seasons, with George Wilson coaching the first four seasons, Don Shula the next 26 and Jimmy Johnson then being in charge for the next four.

But these are clearly different times.

THE DOLPHINS IN-SEASON COACHING FIRINGS

That McDaniel was in danger of losing his job after the disappointing playoff-less 2024 season probably always was more fiction than any close to reality, but the fact remains that owner Stephen Ross felt the need to issue a statement the night of the season finale against the New York Jets indicating he was bringing back McDaniel and GM Chris Grier.

This wasn't nearly as dramatic and maybe surprising as what Ross did toward the end of the 2014 season when he told reporters in the locker room after a 37-35 victory against the Minnesota Vikings in the next-to-last week of the season — after the team already had been eliminated from playoff contention — that he was giving them a present in the form of not having to worry about writing about a coaching search because he was bringing Philbin back in 2015.

And then after a lackluster performance in a 13-point loss against the New York Jets in London left the Dolphins with a 1-3 record, Ross fired Philbin and replaced him with Dan Campbell on an interim capacity.

With Sparano, there also were foreboding circumstances, in that case Ross flying to California to try to woo Jim Harbaugh, only to be turned down and then sign Sparano to a two-year contract extension in January 2011.

Less than a year later, Sparano was fired.

TOUGH TASK AWAITS McDANIEL IN 2025

Where McDaniel is different from Philbin is that he led the Dolphins to the playoffs in each of his first two seasons, whereas Philbin's teams never produced so much as a winning record.

Sparano did help the Dolphins win the AFC East title (their last) in his first season as head coach in 2008, but the team never was able to come close to that 11-5 record.

McDaniel has two winning seasons and two playoff appearances in three years, but now he faces a tricky challenge in trying to get the Dolphins turned back around in the right direction after the 8-9 finish of 2024.

In part because of the cap realities of the big contracts the Dolphins handed out over the past three seasons, the team's talent pool simply can't be expected to be at the same level as 2023 and returning to the playoffs in the very deep AFC is no given.

In making one bold 2025 prediction for every NFL team, Pro Football Network suggested the Dolphins will be firing both Grier and McDaniel during the season.

"The Dolphins have been on a repeated cycle ever since the Dan Marino-Jimmy Johnson-Dave Wannstedt era ended in the early 2000s," PFN wrote. "A new coach comes in, the Dolphins succeed right away with a playoff berth, don’t win in playoffs, and then decline until the coach gets fired.

"It happened with Tony Sparano and Adam Gase, basically happened with Brian Flores (minus missing the playoffs at 10-6), and Mike McDaniel is headed along the exact same path."

From this end, we're thinking it would take an awful lot for Ross to pull the plug before the end of the 2025 season and it's probably just as likely, if not more, that McDaniel matches what Dave Wannstedt was able to do all those years ago.