This was a hiring. It needs to be a healing.
No new Miami Dolphins head coach can ever be called the most important such hire in club history — not after Don Shula arrived in 1970 and turned a sad-sack expansion team into a Super Bowl champion — but the one announced Sunday evening might merit consideration.
Welcome, Mike McDaniel.
Be such a breath of fresh air that it sweeps away the stench. Fix a franchise broken by its owner, Stephen Ross, who has the once-proud Dolphins enmeshed in national controversy. Take a football club that is off the rails and set it straight. Put invigorating fresh hope where the doubt is.
McDaniel comes to South Florida from the San Francisco 49ers, where he was the offensive coordinator. He is 38, young for an NFL head coach. He continues a franchise trend of hiring first-year head coaches, since Dave Wannstedt in 2000 was the last man hired with previous head coaching experience.
The Dolphins have spent the past 20-plus year looking for the next gem, and not finding it.
McDaniel might be a great hire. There are indications
And, after a marathon 10-hour second interview, there was little doubt he was their man.
With the 49ers he proved to be a creative play designer, making a star of tight end George Kittle, making a hybrid star of receiver/runner Deebo Samuel and making the 49ers win despite the limitations of quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo. He is a running-game maven, an offensive guy — which Miami needs.
The priority in this hire should have been a guy to squeeze the most out of quarterback Tua Tagovailoa and find his ceiling, and McDaniel has a credible resume.
I thought Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator Brian Daboll, who had coached Tagovailoa in college at Alabama, was the best choice, but he signed with the New York Giants. I thought Super Bowl champion coach Doug Pederson (who signed with the Jacksonville Jaguars) was an interesting option.
McDaniel is intriguing, though.
Who knows who the next little-known coaching gem-find will be?
With this franchise, though, at this point in its history, McDaniel needs to be more more than right answer on the field, he needs to be the face of “all is well” off it.
This club desperately needs a commanding, calming presence.
This owner, Ross, has been the opposite,
Last month he fired coach Brian Flores, without just cause, after Miami’s first consecutive winning seasons since 2003.
Flores, in an explosive lawsuit this week against the NFL alleging racist hiring results — which the numbers alone seem hard to refute — accused Ross of bribing him to intentionally lose games in 2019, Flores’ first as an NFL head coach, in order to secure the No. 1 overall draft pick.
Flores refused, which led to the souring off their relationship and his altogether unexpected firing.
Now the NFL in investigating and Ross’ time as Dolphins owner might be done — if Flores allegations prove true.
Into this tempest steps young Mr. McDaniel.
He is a Yale graduate. A bright up-and-comer. He is a nerdy, analytics-driven guy. He is fun behind a microphone, the opposite of Flores in that.
He is — not inconsequential to this particular hiring — biracial. His father is Black.
Ross and the Dolphins will wear this is a a badge even as the owner is in court related to Flores’ suit over the NFL’s alleged racism in the hiring of head coaches and general managers.
Look, let’s put this in its broadest, most-macro terms.
The Miami Dolphins — South Florida’s flagship team — are the franchise of ever-distant glories.
Dolfans are still trafficking in the memories of Shula, Dan Marino, Jason Taylor Zach Thomas — the past. Because they have no choice.
Now there is an owner, Ross, who has impinged his own credibility, and the faith of fans.
Fans: You are not rooting for an owner, or even for a particular player. You are rooting for the uniform, the memories, the history, the hope.
Miami Dolphins fans have been waiting for an awfully long time for something that feels like a savior.
Welcome, Mike McDaniel.
Be great.
