The Dolphins’ six-person panel for GM interviews is missing a name that you might be surprised to hear after yesterday
Meet the six-person panel conducting interviews for GMs candidates this week in Miami.
Miami Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel made waves with his end-of-year comments on Monday as it pertained to the team’s front office search for a general manager. When asked about his involvement in the search, McDaniel said that he would be “a part of the process”. That was all the football world needed to hear to jump and backflip to all kinds of assumptions about what that meant. It didn’t help, of course, that half of the six executives requested for interviews are from McDaniel’s old team in San Francisco.
But as the comments have been allowed to marinate, some more clarity has come — and it makes one thing very clear. The Dolphins do, indeed, have necessary separation from their head coach and this upcoming decision.
Mike McDaniel’s not as involved in the general manager search as you may have assumed
McDaniel, when asked a follow-up question to his involvement on Monday, stated that he would be a resource for those making the decision:
“I’ve been in the National Football League for 20 years, so I’m a great resource for when I have overlap and working experience with people,” said McDaniel. “I’m not curating the list, that’s not my decision. I think it’s in the best interest of everyone that we hire the best person for the Miami Dolphins and that’s my sole – the only thing that I’m really trying to do is aid, assist and help.”
On top of knowing McDaniel is not curating the list of candidates, we now know who is going to be sitting in on the interviews — which start on Tuesday. Courtesy of the Miami Herald’s Barry Jackson, we now know there will be six people sitting in on the interviews from the Dolphins’ side of the fence.
Miami Dolphins representatives sitting in on general manager interviews this week
- Stephen Ross, Chairman of the board & managing general partner
- Tom Garfinkel, Vice Chairman, President & CEO
- Brandon Shore, Senior Vice President, Football & Business Administration
- Danny Sillman, Stephen Ross’ son-in-law, co-founder & CEO of ‘Relevant’ — a Stephen Ross-owned sports firm
- Dan Marino, Special advisor to the Vice Chairman, President & CEO (Garfinkel)
- Troy Aikman, Dolphins consultant for the GM search
One name that is, indeed, absent is head coach Mike McDaniel. And that’s a good thing. Regardless of what McDaniel’s ultimate fate is, the Dolphins need to operate this hire in a vacuum as best as they can — it is in many ways a potentially transformative hire for the football operation regardless of how long Mike McDaniel does or doesn’t stay in place. Retrofitting a candidate to fit a coach who has spent the last 12 months on the hot seat would be poor form and bad process.
McDaniel’s statement that he’s available as a “resource” for those making the decision flew under the radar in favor of the first soundbite that hit social media as his end-of-season de-brief with the South Florida press unfolded on Monday. That’s the world of social media in a nutshell, though.
And so for now, the Dolphins’ general manager interview process will continue onward. Virtual interviews, per reports, are expected to be conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday. If and when the panel is interested in McDaniel’s opinions as a resource, he’ll be available. Thanks to the list of candidates the Dolphins have requested, he should have something to say about several of them and that bodes well for his outlook with the team. But it won’t be his call to make and his role isn’t quite what the masses assumed it to be on Monday.