I think I was the most outspoken person on this board against the McDaniel hire. I thought he was a lousy selection based on his lack of resume, and also the appearance that he was knee-jerk hired in response to the Brian Flores accusations.
He's done a very good job with the offense. Mostly, he's done a good job in general. You must qualify your evaluation of the coach by looking at the roster first. And this team does not have an impressive roster, no matter how much we might wish that it did. So yes, this is another Grier bashing post. Chris Grier sucks, and seems to be totally unaccountable within the Dolphins organization. He needs to be replaced with someone who will answer to the owner and bear responsibility for the football team's performance.
But I think when you look at the totality of everything, it becomes clear why I praise McDaniel and damn Grier. Look at the roster, and then look at the results. The team is 8-6 -- better than I thought it would be -- and is currently a coin flip against Buffalo, a team considered to be the one of the premier teams in the league. The offense is scoring 24.6ppg -- 9th in the NFL -- and for God's sake LOOK AT THE PLAYERS.
You have a young quarterback who had no success in his pro career up until this season, and he's playing at a borderline MVP level. You have two blazing fast smurfs at wide receiver... and that's it. The rest of this offense is replacement level players or worse. No talent at RB or TE. Unimpressive OL. And yet the unit is producing a lot of touchdowns, and often making it look easy.
The defense has not been good, not at all. But again, I say, look at the roster. Since 2014, the Miami Dolphins have had one season in which the defense was about average, one season in which it was actually pretty good, and then a bunch of seasons in which it was downright bad. We all agree that Xavien Howard is no longer playing out of his mind, so what were we really expecting here? The defense just isn't good. You can blame the coach, and I'm not particularly defending Boyer, but let's also acknowledge that he has nothing to work with here.
If there's any one area that McDaniel should be compared to Gase, it's that both had very strong first seasons with the team. Gase's problems came later, whereas McDaniel still has plenty of time to avoid them.
I know nobody wants to read it after a loss, but I come on to post this now because it's one of the only games I've been able to watch this season. It was a good game, and I think that for a complete neophyte, McDaniel has done a good job. When the team hired the man, it committed to letting him learn on the job. You certainly don't look to cut bait with the guy after he shows a ton of promise because you suddenly, after the fact decide that you should have hired someone with a resume in the first place.
