The Miami Dolphins and head coach Mike McDaniel are going through a tumultuous offseason. Tyreek Hill has been involved in drama since the final day of the 2024 season, and Jalen Ramsey is likely to be moved.
McDaniel’s coaching methods have been criticized as the team collapsed down the stretch in 2023 and failed to make the playoffs last season. One NFL insider believes this is par for the course, given Miami’s dysfunctional history.
Insider Says Dolphins’ Mike McDaniel Could Be on the Way Out if Miami Has a Tough 2025
McDaniel took over as head coach in 2022 after Miami fired Brian Flores. The Dolphins secured wild-card berths each of his first two seasons, but the team blew a three-game lead in the AFC East with five games to play in 2023. They no-showed against the Kansas City Chiefs in the wild-card round and finished 8-9 last season.
Miami has had one of the NFL’s most potent offenses since McDaniel arrived. Tua Tagovailoa led the 15th-best unit last season, according to PFSN’s Offense+ metric, but he missed four games with his third concussion in two years. Tagovailoa’s health doomed the Dolphins last season, but that hasn’t stopped pundits from blaming the coach.
The team has developed a reputation for being “soft” during McDaniel’s tenure. Many feel he’s loosened the reins too much after Flores’s hard-line mentality. Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio recently broke down the situation in Miami and said he isn’t surprised, given the team’s questionable history with head coaching decisions.
A Dolphins fan account tweeted a clip of Florio discussing the team with NFL reporter Michael Holley.
Florio said, “This is common with many teams. The pendulum goes from one extreme to the other with the coach.” He discussed how McDaniel is the polar opposite of Flores in that he has a great relationship with his players and is open with the media. He then said, “The problem is, they over-corrected. That’s what the dysfunctional teams do.
“We have a coach that takes it too far this way, let’s over-correct with the next one. The danger is gonna be, if Mike McDaniel doesn’t make it in Miami, they’re gonna over-correct with the next one, and that’s gonna introduce Tua [Tagovailoa] to the days of hard coaching.”
🎥 Mike Florio on Miami Dolphins’ ‘culture change’ and moving on from Brian Flores for Mike McDaniel
“This whole ‘we’re changing, we’re changing, we’re changing’ and then the end result is always the same. At some point, ownership has got to say, we have to find a different… pic.twitter.com/p3sHCxBBFF
— FinsXtra (@FinsXtra) June 14, 2025
The insider discussed how some coaches can adjust their style based on a player’s ability to absorb constructive criticism. Florio then predicted that Miami will clean house if they aren’t successful in 2025, saying, “This whole ‘we’re changing, we’re changing, we’re changing’ and then the end result is always the same. At some point, ownership has got to say, we have to find a different way.”
The Dolphins haven’t had a head coach make it through five seasons since Don Shula retired after the 1995 season. If Florio is right, McDaniel will be the next name on the list of failed Miami coaches.
Tagoviola experienced Flores’s hard coaching during his first two seasons and was vocal about it in 2024. McDaniel and Tagovailoa are hoping to work together for years to come. A strong 2025 campaign seems to be the only way to prevent a breakup and another restart for the Dolphins.
Different people need to be coached differently in order for the coach to succeed. The message can be the same, but the the delivery may need adjustment for each individual. Also, let’s distinguish between coaching hard and being a jerk. When your people are grown men making millions of dollars a year, they just might have limits around having their chain yanked.