Mike McDaniel and his Dolphins players are once again not on the same page about what went wrong amid another embarrassing loss
It’s not the first time this season that Mike McDaniel and his captains have had a different take about what went wrong after a game.
Yikes! A 17-point lead in the first half for the Miami Dolphins had things looking up for a brief moment — but the Carolina Panthers had other plans.
Carolina’s run game absolutely bludgeoned the Dolphins’ defense across the final 45 minutes of play, and Miami would go on to squander two leads: one at 17-0 early and then a 24-20 lead late in the fourth quarter. One of the big questions out of a fumbled game like this is whether or not the Dolphins got too big for their britches upon seizing early control of the game. Head coach Mike McDaniel didn’t seem to think so afterwards.
“I was monitoring that live, making sure guys didn’t lose their edge, and I didn’t feel that…I was worried about guys from a focus standpoint kind of packing it in, but I didn’t feel that (they did),” said McDaniel during his post-game press availability.
There’s just one problem with that. One of his team captains, who shared the same podium after the game, said otherwise. And it isn’t the first time this season the chaos of a late loss has led to conflicting messaging during the debriefing.
Bradley Chubb and Mike McDaniel have very different perceptions on if Dolphins got comfortable with a 17-point lead
“We’ve got to be better on the defensive side of the ball, man. Started off hot, I don’t want to speak for everybody, but in a sense, it felt like we got comfortable (with the lead). 27 points after that,” Chubb said.
“That’s not winning football, that’s not winning defense and at the end of the day, we’ve all got to look in the mirror and bow up and see who is going to be here for each other, who is going to be accountable for their actions…it’s not just going through the motions, it’s about making a change. We sit up here talking about ‘we’ve got to stop the run’, ‘we’ve got to stop the run’, ‘we’ve got to stop the run’.”
Dolphins’ defense in Week 5 vs. the Panthers by the numbers
- 6.4 yards per play (418 total yards allowed)
- 239 rushing yards allowed (7.5 yards per carry)
- 7/13 on third & fourth down conversions allowed
If this feels familiar, it should. In the aftermath of Miami’s 31-21 loss to the Buffalo Bills in Week 3, McDaniel said outright at his post-game press conference that Tua Tagovailoa’s game-deciding interception needed to be thrown into the flat. Point-blank, period.
Tagovailoa, in his own press conference, doubled down on the decision to throw the ball where he did, stating that the leverage of the primary defender dictates the throw as the right decision.
It served as a remarkable disconnect between the two most notable faces of the football operation. Surely, Tagovailoa and his coaches had time to discuss the interception on the sideline and how that error needed to be resolved next time around. However, they weren’t on the same page. And now, for the second time in three weeks, McDaniel and his players continue to offer differing explanations as to how certain parts of the game are unfolding, underscoring a problematic disconnect.
These Dolphins are out of time. The hole they’ve dug is catastrophically deep. This is typically the point at which a season gone wrong evolves into deeper rifts. That’s what McDaniel, who is coaching for his job, must worry about. So, wherever that disconnect exists, it had better get fixed. And fast.
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