Mike McDaniel Is Breaking the NFL’s Mold

By Rob Searles on September 23, 2023

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NFL team owners often put too much stock in the value of a coaching tree. The faulty logic at play is somewhat understandable. Find someone who worked with a mastermind, and you can copy/paste that football genius onto your franchise.

The most obvious example of this can be found in Bill Belichick’s coaching disciples, particularly former assistants who worked with him on the defensive side of the ball. Romeo Crennel, Eric Mangini, and Matt Patricia all landed head coaching positions after serving as Belichick’s defensive coordinator at one point or another. Once these three coaches left the nest and attempted to spread their wings and fly, they immediately plummeted to the ground, their hopes of returning to the head coaching skies at least temporarily dashed.

Crennel, Mangini, and Patricia combined for a 78-139 record as head coaches. A disastrous .359 combined career winning percentage. The exception to the rule — which includes an asterisk because he was never officially anointed as Belichick’s defensive coordinator — is Brian Flores. Despite going 19-17 over his final two seasons as head coach of the Miami Dolphins, Flores was let go after three seasons in South Beach.

All of these organizations were chasing what Belichick accomplished way back when he was working directly under legendary head coach Bill Parcells for 16 years. After leaving the shadow of his iconic former boss, Belichick forged a path of his own and became the greatest coach the game has ever seen.

Which brings me to Mike McDaniel.

Before I go any further, it’s imperative that we have a mutual understanding. By no means am I attempting to say that this man is the next Belichick, nor is his old boss in San Francisco in the same stratosphere as Parcells. Now that we’ve included the appropriate disclaimers, let’s talk Dolphins head coach McDaniel and San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan.

Unless you’ve been living in a 1950s bomb shelter in fear of Y2K over the past two-plus decades, you already know that Shanahan’s coaching tree has spread at damn near an exponential rate since he became a head coach in 2017. And one particular branch of that tree, Shanahan’s former position coach assistants (Sean McVay), has grown into a Redwood Forest coaching tree of his own.

Unlike Belichick’s former-assistants-turned-head-coaches, seemingly every single former offensive assistant who worked under Shanahan and/or McVay has found tremendous success in leading their respective organizations.

Former Los Angeles Rams offensive coordinator Kevin O’Connell won 13 games during his inaugural season with the Minnesota Vikings last year. McDaniel won nine games with the Dolphins in Year 1 and nearly pulled off the upset in the Wild Card round at Buffalo with a backup quarterback. Matt LaFleur, a former Rams’ offensive coordinator under McVay and position coach assistant under Shanahan, won 13 games in each of his first three seasons with the Green Bay Packers. McVay’s former quarterbacks coach Zac Taylor hoisted the AFC Championship trophy in 2021 and almost did it again in 2022.

But McDaniel is different than the rest of the flash-in-the-pan assistants who worked under either Shanahan and/or McVay before being handed the keys to an organization of their own. Similar to Belichick’s 16 years coaching under Parcells, McDaniel spent 14 years working his way up the chain of command for the younger Shanahan. And they won a lot of games — including two NFC Championship games — together over their final two stops with the Atlanta Falcons and 49ers.

But McDaniel has a style all his own. After quickly deviating from the conventional Shanahan way of ground-and-pound and keeping your game-manager quarterback on a tight leash for 60 minutes in his debut season with Dolphins, McDaniel is breaking new ground and creating concepts that the league has never seen before in his following act for Year 2.

In Week 1 inside SoFi Stadium (aka the 49ers’ vacation home), McDaniel unveiled an entirely new set of motion concepts that had McVay’s former defensive coordinator, Brandon Staley, and his Chargers defense completely dumbfounded.

The Dolphins were in a 12-personnel (one running back, two tight ends, two wide receivers) gun look with All-Pro wide receiver (and certified cheat code) Tyreek Hill initially lined up as an H-back just off the right tackle. And right before the snap, Hill was sent into a dead sprint motion to the field just outside the condensed split of Dolphins receiver River Cracraft. Staley’s man coverage call was exposed when former All-Pro corner J.C. Jackson followed Hill’s motion and was left isolated against the game’s fastest player — with a running start similar to a track star bursting out of the blocks. Hill’s shockingly sudden motion, mixed with his generational, speed created immediate leverage as he pressed Jackson vertically before breaking on the intermediate dig.

Like taking candy from a baby.

The separation that @Cheetah creates…

📺: #MIAvsLAC on CBS
📱: Stream on #NFLPlus https://t.co/G4uoYVOqQn pic.twitter.com/NkTjL7GjvQ

— NFL (@NFL) September 10, 2023

Later in the contest, McDaniel continued to play games with Staley’s secondary by way of completely unorthodox window-dressing motion. However, this time it was Dolphins tight end Durham Smythe who played the role of pre-snap occupier when McDaniel sent him into an orbit motion (behind the quarterback). Up until this very moment, orbit motion had been universally reserved for speed threats, because a big-bodied tight end isn’t instilling fear into an opposing defense as the horizontal threat. Believe you me, no one was wasting their time sending tight ends into orbit. All-Pro safety Derwin James foolishly took the bait and temporarily brain-farted his two-man responsibilities over the top of Hill.

Why is orbit motion by a tight end occupying Derwin James’ eyes and commanding his full attention when Tyreek Hill is on the field…? pic.twitter.com/9736ArFor8

— Rob Searles (@RobBob17) September 13, 2023

Innovation of this magnitude doesn’t take long to spread like wildfire, especially between the best offensive minds and play callers on the planet. Shanahan and the 49ers couldn’t help but catch wind of what his former longtime pupil had created with the 12-personnel, condensed split motion out of twins for a cheat code. While Shanahan certainly has a few weapons that have earned the cheat code designation, he put All-Pro wide receiver Deebo Samuel into the exact same role McDaniel had cast Hill in a week prior — and in the same building, no less! Quite honestly, the only difference is that Shanahan was using 21-personnel with Pro Bowl fullback Kyle Juszyzyk serving as the additional heavy instead of a second tight end. And Shanahan “riversided” the call by going the opposite direction McDaniel had the previous week.

One week and Kyle is already stealing from his minion.

These motions out of condensed splits (for Cheat Codes like Cheetah & Deebo) is reminiscent of arena football.

Mike McDaniel continues to innovate. pic.twitter.com/ipXd8xDYox

— Rob Searles (@RobBob17) September 18, 2023

Not to be outdone in this real-time case study of The Student Becoming the Teacher, McDaniel sprinkled in a new, never before seen motion concept a few hours later on Sunday Night Football against against Belichick and the New England Patriots.

Facing a first-and-goal from the two-yard line, McDaniel gets into an 11-personnel condensed empty formation with trips to the field. Hill and the tight end Smythe occupy the boundary, with Hill serving as the outside receiver and Smythe as a glorified H-back. Belichick counters by going press-man across the board with a cover-zero blitz. Like last week against the Chargers, the borderline H-back (this time Smythe) suddenly goes in motion past Hill right before the snap, creating additional and immediate outside leverage for Hill to work with on the easy pitch-and-catch out route for six.

Tua. Cheetah. TD.

📺: #MIAvsNE on NBC
📱: Stream on #NFLPlus https://t.co/FhXtx7w3wW pic.twitter.com/QwaPXzL0FH

— NFL (@NFL) September 18, 2023

These past two weeks are the separator for McDaniel. Unlike all the other proteges that came after Shanahan and McVay, McDaniel is creating new concepts and ways to beat defenses (and with relative ease). I can assure you, O’Connell isn’t creating anything new with the Vikings after leaving the Rams. Instead, he’s still dialing up all the same tricks that McVay used during their two years together. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, because the same can be said for LaFleur in Green Bay and Taylor in Cincinnati.

As long as McDaniel continues to pioneer a new frontier for himself and this Dolphins’ offense, it won’t be long until every other other Shanahan and/or McVay disciple follows suit and implements these new, game-changing concepts into their own offenses for cheat codes such as Justin Jefferson, Aaron Jones, and Ja’Marr Chase.

Especially since it only took the godfather of this coaching tree one week to copy and paste it onto his own playsheet.

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