The National Scorecard on Mike McDaniel's Status

The Miami Dolphins’ season will end after their Week 18 game against the New England Patriots Sunday, and the biggest question surrounding the team is the fate of head coach Mike McDaniel.

McDaniel has practically been on the hot seat the entire season, but especially so following the team’s firing of general manager Chris Grier. Nobody expected McDaniel to get fired midseason, but it was clear he needed to right the ship in a big way.

As always, the insiders for national outlets are keeping their tabs on what the Dolphins could do with McDaniel, and we got new reports in recent days that have some conflicting predictions.

Latest from NFL Network on McDaniel’s Status

The most recent national report comes via the NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport and Tom Pelissero, who released an article Saturday morning detailing their thoughts on the coaching carousel.

Here’s the important part of what they wrote: “But signs continue to point towards McDaniel returning for a fifth season, especially with the recent win over the Bucs and rookie quarterback Quinn Ewers showing promise. Since a 1-6 start, Miami is 6-3.”

They went on to note that if McDaniel stays, there could be some staff changes.

If you’ve followed the national reporting on this topic throughout the season, you’d know that NFL Network’s insiders have been pretty consistent in thinking McDaniel would return next season.

Rapoport and Pelissero also went out of their way to mention that McDaniel is 6-3 in his last nine games, and that Quinn Ewers’ development has looked good. That means the team’s game can help continue to make McDaniel’s case.

If the Dolphins finish the year 7-3 and Ewers looks good against a quality opponent, it might be enough to push Ross to keep McDaniel.

We’d argue that letting one (somewhat meaningless) game and the play of a seventh-round QB in his third career start be the deciding factor isn’t ideal, but all of this is based on speculation anyway.

Ultimately, the NFL Network duo seems fairly confident McDaniel will return in 2026.

Latest from ESPN on McDaniel’s Status

ESPN insiders Jeremy Fowler and Dan Graziano released a notebook on Dec. 31 detailing what they were hearing about coaching movement across the league.

Here’s what Graziano wrote about McDaniel: “I'm hearing conflicting things on Miami; for a while it sounded as if Mike McDaniel was a good bet to stay, but lately the winds seem to have shifted a bit on that, so we'll see where that lands.”

As Graziano points out, most of the prior reporting done by ESPN and others indicated that McDaniel was likely to return in 2026. However, ever since the team’s loss to the Bengals a few weeks ago, some chatter about McDaniel’s job not being safe started to surface.

Of course, some of that chatter came from Adam Schefter, who went on The Pat McAfee Show and said no decision had been made on McDaniel’s future on Dec. 22.

Overall, it seems like the folks at ESPN are much more open to the Dolphins making a change at head coach.

This is interesting for obvious reasons, but it’s clear that ESPN’s sources are saying something different — or at least, less definitive — than the NFL Network’s.

Most of the time, the major insiders are pretty in step with these things, so it’s an outlier to see ESPN’s reporting be a lot more open-ended.

CBS Sports Latest on McDaniel's Status

Lastly, we've got a report from CBS Sports' Jonathan Jones also released Saturday.

Jones is much more in line with NFL Network's reporting, writing: "The Dolphins appear to be moving forward with Mike McDaniel, as was the case last month. The search for a GM has been underway, and I'm told the Dolphins have been adding and removing names from their internal list recently."

This is a pretty definitive statement from Jones, who has clearly believed McDaniel would be staying for some time. He also had a note about the GM being hired to work with McDaniel and Brandon Shore, the team's SVP of football and business administration.

Jones also mentioned that Daniel Sillman, a sports executive and Stephen Ross's son-in-law, will have a voice in the GM decision.

That has less to do with McDaniel, of course, but it would be surprising if Ross consulted Sillman on the GM job and not whether to keep McDaniel around.

CBS Sports and NFL Network seem pretty confident McDaniel will return in 2026, while ESPN is more open-minded. We should know which way the Dolphins are truly leaning soon.

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