Editing the Miami Dolphins’ in-season Hard Knocks on a normal week is a Herculean task, but doing so for a Tuesday evening broadcast less than 24 hours after an epic fourth-quarter meltdown is an unfair ask.
So NFL Films got a mulligan for the very limited way in which it portrayed the Dolphins’ loss to the Tennessee Titans last week.
But make no mistake: The show didn’t avoid the 15-point elephant in the room a week later.
A Hard Knocks camera crew was in Mike McDaniel’s office with the Dolphins coach less than five hours after that nationally televised debacle ended, and it lingered on McDaniel as he broke down the ugly game tape with Eminem turned the whole way up.
“Frankly, I’m at my best in times of adversity,” McDaniel told Dolphins offensive line coach Butch Barry.
As we saw over the next 40 minutes, McDaniel wasn’t kidding.
Mike McDaniel Gets Real in Hard Knocks Episode 5
McDaniel preaches honesty and transparency, and the only way he can demand it of his team is by demanding it from himself.
So during a Dolphins team meeting at some point between Monday’s loss to the Titans and Sunday’s 30-0 annihilation of the New York Jets, he pointed the finger at himself.
He called up a third-down Dolphins offensive play inside the Titans’ five-yard line that was one of three red-zone failures in Week 14. Instead of handing the ball to Raheem Mostert, the NFL’s touchdown leader, he had Tua Tagovailoa throw a low-percentage fade to Cedrick Wilson Jr.
McDaniel called it a “trash plan on my part” to have his star quarterback throw a “fadeaway jumper” to “overcompensate for me.”
McDaniel then had the line of the episode — and the series to date:
“Yeah, I called some trash f—ing plays. That’ll happen. I’m going to learn from that s—. You don’t get mad, you don’t get sad. F— that s—. You learn lessons.”
McDaniel was true to his word.
The next time the Dolphins were goal-to-go — in the first half of their Week 15 win — he called three straight Mostert runs. On the third try, Mostert was in the end zone for the first of his two touchdowns on the day.
McDaniel also tends toward being a bit too reliant on Tyreek Hill, the NFL’s leading receiver.
But with Hill out of the Jets game with a bad ankle, McDaniel knew the offense had to run through Jaylen Waddle, the dynamic third-year playmaker who had become Robin to Hill’s Batman the last two seasons.
"I'm really visualizing the one-play drive here."
Mike McDaniel is out here manifesting TDs 💫 #HardKnocks pic.twitter.com/EKDNHDesLZ
— NFL (@NFL) December 20, 2023
“I’m going to get the ball more to Waddle,” a mic’d up McDaniel was heard saying during the game.
Mission accomplished. Waddle had a season-high 142 yards on eight catches Sunday.
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Sixty of those yards came on a touchdown pass from Tagovailoa, which McDaniel was so confident would work that he told his bench before the snap, “I’m having a tough time not visualizing a one-play drive here.”
Hill should be back this week, but McDaniel can’t forget the lessons learned on the longest short week of the season.
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