Miami Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel is a pretty chill dude most of the time, and why shouldn’t he be? The Dolphins’ offense, designed and implemented by McDaniel, is the NFL’s best and most explosive. They’re first in Offensive DVOA, points scored (223), yards gained (2,992), passing yards (1,901), passing touchdowns (15), Net Passing Yards per Attempt (9.2), rushing yards (1,091), rushing touchdowns (15), and on and on and on.
But if you want to raise McDaniel’s ire, just refer to quarterback Tua Tagovailoa as a replaceable system quarterback. One reporter did that in the form of this question on Wednesday during McDaniel’s press conference, and the coach wasn’t having it.
Mike McDaniel said he wanted to “push the podium over” addressing @schadjoe question that ANY QB to orchestrate the #Dolphins offense and have this level of success. pic.twitter.com/engPOmEytL
— Omar Kelly (@OmarKelly) October 18, 2023
“There are some folks who believe that many quarterbacks in this game, with you as the coach, with WR Tyreek Hill and WR Jaylen Waddle, maybe even many, many quarterbacks would excel and flourish, would be near the top of the passer rater leading and be an MVP candidate,” the reporter asked. “What if any pushback is there relative to “wait, no, hold on, Tua is a little different?”
“My answer to that would be, ‘who the F cares’ because it is a team,” McDaniel responded. “We’re working together and I know one thing. I’ve coached stuff a long time. I haven’t seen people do what our guys do and I mean, in a lot of experiences, to their credit, to their ability and their commitment to their craft; I know as a teammate, we’re all dependent on each other and I’m not in any hurry to prove myself without those guys because those are part of who we are and to try to say it’s this person or that person is kind of missing the point.
“It is a team working together, people working together and myself, Tyreek Hill, Tua, cool but what if no one’s blocking anyone? You know what I mean? Like we’re all connected in that way. That’s why I think a lot of the guys; Tua’s success is their success. Tyreek’s success, Waddle’s, Raheem’s, etc. We’re all tied together, it’s a journey that we’re experiencing together. Somebody will get the statistics from it, but none of those statistics are worth anything if you don’t have full support from your players across the board, all 11, and then it goes down to the organization and all those things combined.
“But I know this; our players run a lot of plays that I have a lot of history with and it looks different, and that’s because of hard work and unbelievable ability. So don’t try me on other players. I’m not trying to prove that.”
Hard to argue with that.
