Survival Sundays for NFL head coaches have been taking place in earnest for a few weeks now. We already have two vacancies—the Giants and the Titans—plus an in-season general manager firing in Miami. That latter transaction was the culmination of weeks of speculation around Miami’s coach, Mike McDaniel. Questions about his job security became as commonplace as banal injury updates.
However, after Sunday’s 16–13 overtime win over the Commanders in Madrid, the Dolphins are now winners of two straight and three of their past four. At 4–7 and with games against the Saints and Jets coming after their bye week, there’s a very real chance Miami will be 6–7 going into a mid-December, pre-Christmas stretch against the Steelers, a team that seems to be slowing down considerably as the season wanes (as is tradition), and the Bengals, owners of the worst defense in the NFL.
That begs the question: Despite GM turnover with Chris Grier’s dismissal, could McDaniel save himself in Miami? After surveying the coaching landscape leading up to this weekend, I think the answer is, at the very least, worth discussing. While this is not coming directly from Miami’s building, those who are charged with predicting and analyzing potential openings for a living are split on whether the Dolphins will end up retaining McDaniel going into 2026.
The argument for the pro-McDaniel camp is that Miami will ultimately charge its new general manager with this decision. If the Dolphins’ GM search runs too deep into the coaching carousel, this would likely take the Dolphins out of the equation for a new GM’s top choice candidate.
Furthermore, if you’re a new GM, inheriting a head coach isn’t always as disastrous as it may seem. It often gives the GM a trial year at the helm before making one of the two tentpole decisions—coach and quarterback—that start the clock on your own potential demise.
Couple that with the fact that McDaniel is rich in traits that are incredibly scarce in this current iteration of the coaching carousel—a coach with a strong offensive background and a track record of getting the most out of a quarterback who was once deemed a failed experiment—and the Dolphins’ new general manager may see it as sound practice to allow McDaniel the chance to operate an offense without Tua Tagovailoa for at least one season. McDaniel’s current contract runs through the end of the 2028 season. Outside of Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak, the market does not necessarily feature an obvious star play-caller peaking at the right time for head coach consideration (and, there’s no guarantee Kubiak will leave Seattle after this year, for many reasons).
McDaniel is well-liked in Miami and would almost certainly be in the discussion for most, if not all of the top offensive coordinator openings if he was let go at the end of the season. He may even be in consideration for a head coach opening. Between McDaniel’s first year in 2022 to now, his offenses have combined to be 11th overall in EPA per play, one spot ahead of Sean McVay’s Rams at No. 12. The teams in front of Miami include offenses quarterbacked by Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, Jalen Hurts, Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow and Dak Prescott.
In that time frame, the Dolphins are a top-10 team in EPA per dropback and are a respectable 19th in EPA per rush. This, despite a roster that grew so threadbare that the team opted to fire its general manager midway through the 2025 season. The Dolphins have little in the way of stability across the offensive line, and the young offensive players that McDaniel has been handed—Jaylen Waddle and De’Von Achane—have both developed into top-end playmakers.
The counter, of course, is also obvious. A new general manager could insist on making his or her stamp on the position right away. A new general manager could be tied with a possible ascending coaching candidate. A new general manager, realizing that the titanic weight of Tagovailoa’s contract may tie the quarterback to the franchise for another year, may want to see him with a third head coach.
McDaniel, while remaining himself, can also be perceived from the outside as rambling, indifferent or simply not of the correct temperament to hold a job that is typically coveted by the fire-breathing, clipboard-smashing class. The team has been through the cycle of public unhealthiness, including the airing of necessary players-only meetings and the removal of Ping-Pong tables from the locker room—both signs that a team is deficient in some way emotionally or lacking a more forceful presence in leadership.
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