By this metric alone, McD has been successful. 9 wins in 2022 and 11 wins in 2023. That seems like continuous progress to me, and certainly not clueless behavior.
You are definitely being too hard on him.
Nothing wrong with wanting more, but looking at what you stated was most important, he is doing a pretty good job for us.
This is where there has to be push back. I wish forums were more mixed because Dolphins fans need to hear actual criticism rather than just giving each other the good news.
Firstly, 9-8 is basically a .500 record and with a supposedly good QB and a Top-10 roster that ought to be about the absolute
minimum imaginable, let alone an acceptable stat used in defense of this franchise.
For the love of God, the previous HC Brian Flores (who got fired mind you) achieved the
same record with a less talented roster and with Tua missing 5.5 games with various injuries which is technically
more time than he missed with concussions in McDaniel's first season (4.5).
The hallmark of the Flores teams lay in the fact they could only beat teams that had bad offenses and terrible QBs. Generally, Flores' teams suffocated those teams with aggressive defense and the Miami offense got away with doing very little. Recall the games against the various sub-par QBs: Gardner Minshew, Mac Jones, Cam Newton, Brandon Allen, Ian Book, Joe Flacco, Zach Wilson, Daniel Jones and Tyrod Taylor. We can probably include the
rookie Justin Herbert in that list, too, since he was entirely ill-equipped to match Flores defense at the time. Heck, they even
lost games to Jacoby Brissett and Carson Wentz.
Has the McDaniel era really been different? How many prolific teams have the Dolphins actually taken down? Sadly, it wasn't really the mailed-in effort of Vic Fangio either, surprisingly. The defense has been decent, even against the better QBs like Jalen Hurts and Pat Mahomes. They were good against Josh Allen in the final regular season game.
The problem was Mike McDaniel's offense
failing to score. In a lot of cases, they couldn't even get first downs and posses the ball against good teams. And that's with this offense loaded with weaponry. In the "biggest win" this year it was Jason Sanders kicking 5 FGs and the defense forcing a fumble at the goal line that saved the day!
11 wins is fine, but again, it's a marginal improvement that only looks good if your expectation is .500 and you're not being critical.
Since the McDaniel era began, the team has historically struggled against most of the top teams in each division. They are 1-3 against
Buffalo, 0-2 against
KC, 1-1 against the
LAC, 1-1 against
Baltimore, 0-1 against
Cincinnati, 0-1 against
Tennessee, 0-1 against
SF, 0-1 against
GB, 0-1 against
Philly, etc.
I'm sure we make excuses for each of those but at some point it's like,
'c'mon, what's wrong with us?'
Quite frankly, the losses have gotten uglier under McDaniel really. We've had more losses on big stages (which admittedly suggests the national media is at least paying attention). We had 2 big match-ups against Buffalo and lost them both. We had a Sunday Night game against the Chargers last year where we looked totally inept on offense. Tua was 3/17 at one point. We had a Sunday Night game in Philly we lost. We had widely-advertised match-ups against the Ravens and Chiefs. We lost both games. We had a Monday Night game against the Titans. We lost. We had a Play-off game and we lost it looking pretty lousy on offense.
So congrats, the team has found a way to draw attention but not to capitalize on it like the Lions, Packers and Texans did this season with big wins in the regular season and in the Playoffs, too!
The most impressive looking wins under McDaniel came last year but most of those teams were better this year (e.g. Baltimore, Detroit). We lost to Baltimore this year and probably would've lost to Detroit had we played them, IDK. We barely beat Dallas who didn't play all that well.
You have to be critical of the Dolphins or else you're just not being fair. Miami is a decent team but they failed to deliver after attracting a bunch of attention with splashy offseason moves and a media-friendly HC.
What you have is a team that reporters and analysts are obviously more interested in now compared with how things looked 2 years ago but that doesn't mean it's really a good team.
