Chris Perkins: Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel can't return next season

Chris Perkins, South Florida Sun Sentinel on Oct 6, 2025

Published in Football

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It’s now safe to say Miami Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel shouldn’t be back next year. The rest of this season is simply an exercise in how long owner Steve Ross allows McDaniel to twist in the breeze.

This isn’t a knee-jerk reaction. This is cumulative.

We’ve watched the Dolphins for the past three-plus seasons under McDaniel, capped by Sunday’s humiliating 27-24 loss at Carolina.

There’s no room left to question what McDaniel can accomplish the rest of this season. He can’t accomplish anything meaningful. This entire era is a lost cause, a missed opportunity.

The player empowerment. The continuing reliance on speed. The lack of physicality and toughness. The reluctance to make changes. All of it adds up to the window closing on a chance for the Dolphins to win their first playoff game in 25 years.

McDaniel is a .500 coach (29-29, including playoffs) with the best talent this franchise has had in the past two decades, talent he shrewdly accumulated along with general manager Chris Grier.

Unfortunately, the talent has gone to waste due to poor strategy and a misguided philosophy. It didn’t have to be this way. Changes should have been made a couple of years ago. I’ve probably written 10 columns over the past two-plus years wondering whether McDaniel can coach, questioning his strategy and asking why changes aren’t being made.

Sunday’s loss, which dropped Miami to 1-4 and featured Panthers running back Rico Dowdle, a backup, plowing the defense for 206 yards, might be the low point of the McDaniel era. The problem is that that list is becoming crowded. Things keep getting worse with this team.

We see bad decisions such as punting on fourth down Sunday with 1:10 remaining and trailing by a field goal, knowing your defense hasn’t made a stop since the first quarter. We see more and more organizational errors such as a head-scratching 12 men in the huddle call earlier in the season or problems getting the right personnel on the field, both of which have happened this season.

The downward spiral hasn’t stopped.

The best thing the Dolphins can do now is get out the broom and make a clean sweep — McDaniel, Grier and quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. Get all three out at season’s end and start all over again. This didn’t work.

Nothing is official, obviously, until we hear from Ross.

But even Ross, who as recently as two weeks ago leaked out to the media that he’d be patient with McDaniel, has got to see that the McDaniel era, with its 4-16 record vs. playoff teams, is going nowhere but down.

The turning point was that ugly 28-27 loss to Tennessee late in the 2023 season.

The Dolphins were 18-12 (.600) overall, including playoffs, under McDaniel heading into that game. They’ve gone 11-17 (.393), including playoffs, since that jarring loss.

It only gets worse from here because McDaniel’s words will fall on deaf ears.

Dolphins players will always like McDaniel, a coach who wants to produce better men as badly as he wants to produce better players. They’ll always play hard for McDaniel, who everyone would agree is a class act.

But I doubt that McDaniel’s philosophy, game plans or encouraging words will resonate with players any longer. Soon, perhaps as soon as Monday, they’ll stop believing. You can’t blame them. By now, they’ve got to realize McDaniel doesn’t produce significant victories even when he has superior talent.

Worse, in the past 18 months or so, for one reason or another, Dolphins players have lost a collection of immensely talented teammates that includes wide receiver Tyreek Hill, cornerback Jalen Ramsey, defensive tackle Calais Campbell, offensive tackle Terron Armstead, guard Robert Hunt and defensive tackle Christian Wilkins. Hill, Ramsey and Campbell are probable future Hall of Famers, and Armstead is a multi-time Pro Bowl talent.

If McDaniel couldn’t make it work with those guys, how the heck can he be expected to make it work better without them?

The shame is that it didn’t have to turn out this way.

This is an organizational failure on a grand scale. The organization failed McDaniel in the same way it failed Tua.

McDaniel had an opportunity to make changes, to make this team more physical, to develop a more varied offense, something aside from a deep passing game that featured Tua throwing to Tyreek, who is out for the year with a knee injury. But no one insisted McDaniel make changes to a system that was never going to work long term.

Similarly, Tua needed more help offensively. He needed a run game and a better offensive line. He needed a better offensive strategy. Again, no one insisted McDaniel make changes to an offensive system (speed, speed, and more speed) that was never going to work long term in a physical league.

They all need to go at season’s end. Grier. McDaniel. Tua. The Dolphins must start over, and not because they had ineffective talent, but because they had effective talent and they couldn’t make it work. And worse, no one understood why McDaniel’s philosophy wouldn’t work.

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