Mike McDaniel – May 23, 2023
Download PDF version
Tuesday, May 23, 2023
Head Coach Mike McDaniel
(On the Panthers and Heat) – “How cool is that for South Florida sports just in general, just riding the 2023 but specifically the Heat and the Panthers doing a lot of things that people said they couldn’t do, which I very much appreciate and we are definitely taking note.”
(I wanted to ask you kind of a three-for-oner. So S Brandon Jones and CB Nik Needham – any sense yet if they’ll be ready for training camp with those two and then the third, young DB Trill Williams – there was some Tweet form a family member suggesting he had moved to safety. Has he moved from cornerback to safety?) – “Wow, dude, inside family lines for reporting scoops? All right. (laughter)”
(That’s why I come to you.) – “I see Brandon and Nik every day. When I say diligent, that’s what their days are. I feel good about where they’re at right now. What does that mean? Down the road I try not to get consumed with like, ‘Alright, you’re going to be ready now.’ So that you’re wearing that anxiety – we just want to stay on schedule and or ahead and all reports have been just that because of the way that our medical staff goes about their business and the way they attack their whole rehab. So excited about them. And this is the offseason. There’s a lot of power for players, specifically when you’re learning a new system, like our defense is currently learning. To be able to have versatility is always powerful when you’re talking about being an NFL player and there’s no better way to understand your responsibility within that set structure of a defense than understand what other contributors and how their issues apply to your issues, and that cross-training stuff will always be a part and it’s certainly for a couple individuals on our defense something that we’re trying to attack with that versatility. So move – if you’re reporting it to our opponents, you can say we’re moving guys left and right. But for you know, in house, a safe place for you guys, that’s just versatility is a good thing.”
(What is the addition of T Isaiah Wynn mean to the right tackle situation and OL Austin Jackson? Is that an open competition?) – “Any time that you can add Wynns to a roster, right? See what I did there? (laughter) Yeah, still got it. I’ve been training all offseason. It’s like everything else. We’re a product of our environment and when guys are going about things the right way and have experienced playing at a high level in the NFL, that raises the urgency, raises the competitiveness, and overall, helps every player involved as long as people are working together, which all of our Georgia Bulldogs are good teammates. So he’s been awesome. He’s getting work at several spots and has the opportunity to win some playing time at several spots, but it’s also, there’s only five players that play each down and overall, I know the collection of the offensive line is best served in this current environment. Who those people are; I don’t do the magnet slotting. I let people in situations whether they’re performing their lifelong dream of a job, decide their own fate. So just throw a bunch of guys in that fit the bill and I think the Dolphins are best served waiting to see who tells us who’s going to be a starter or backup or whatever.”
(As it relates to building off the successes of Year 1 with the offense, I was curious what the offseason was like for you in terms of self-scouting and what you kind of carry away with saying, “All right in Year 2, I want to improve in this area of the offense?”) – “It was kind of a critical offseason for me. I didn’t look at our offense, and say, ‘Wow, we did all this stuff good.’ I saw all the stuff that we could improve upon. Now, the stuff that the players and coaches did last year, you shouldn’t minimize that because there was substantial growth, to the tune of improving – quick math – 25 spots. And in your league-wide ranking, that should never be minimized. But that’s not where we’re trying to go. So the coaching staff was ready for the players to get back and realistically, players love direction. They love – ‘we need to be better’ only goes so far. So, identifying critical things in our game. An easy one was pre-snap penalties. We were the worst at that. So got a lot of ways to improve there. I think it’s important in the offseason that you give the season – there’s a lot of things that go into it. There’s a lot of pressures and you’re just trying to win the next game. Taking a step back, I think affords people a little more open mindedness. And all I’ve seen is an offense, I’ve seen a team that isn’t satisfied with where they’re at. They see 2023 is an opportunity to really move past where we were last year. And that’s the way they’ve approached it. From route running to how we block people, to everything in between; the consistency of our fundamentals and detail has been huge and we’ve had as a result, I mean, the growth that we made in Phase 1 and Phase 2, relative to last year, is astronomical. Guys really had a comfort level of what – here with the Miami Dolphins, we come to work to get better. And we don’t spend any time or any focus on anything but that and we know that this game has a place for a lot of us individually, as long as we continue to get better. It’s pretty cut and dry and it should be that way. You know, the coaches, players, we all have jobs that are hard to get and you shouldn’t – the second that you’re not trying to get better, there’s an entitlement there that I don’t really think helps one succeed. So it’s been a lot of what we can get better at. If you guys are feeling up for it, maybe throw me a pat on the back, because I haven’t given myself many this year.”
(I believe this is the first time QB Tua Tagovailoa has been back on the field for team drills since that concussion. What have you seen from him this offseason as he starts to get back to football?) – “I’ve seen a guy that’s followed through with his words as well as any young man that I’ve come across in my career. Controlling the controllable is something that I would epitomize his offseason with. You want to talk about going above and beyond – training, martial arts. So much so that he knew the training before he knew what it was called. I think he was calling it judo. Jiujitsu is what he was doing, but that in terms of helping him progress in his career has been phenomenal. The work that he’s done this offseason, it was so obviously beneficial that we’ve incorporated it into some of our drill work that we’ll do with the quarterbacks to – I think it was Teddy Bridgewater made this point to me last year. As a quarterback you go, September starts, and then you get tackled. And then you get tackled for six months and then you don’t again until September. So how can we help train quarterbacks to stay healthy because it wasn’t just too early. How do you stay healthy in this game and stay available? And that’s something that that whole offseason training has really helped us try to take a good step in the right direction for how to best prepare players for an NFL season.”
(On that jiu-jitsu, obviously we’ve heard but we haven’t seen it. Have you seen any of it and if at all, what does that look like as far as his training and how it translates?) – “It kind of looks like bullying. Like it’s just a guy being attacked and going to the ground. And then how to transfer energy to disperse it and not have a central impact focus. It’s something that, it makes you think, hey, why haven’t we detailed this before? Because when you think about it, you have so much coaching that goes into where you stand in the huddle, how you deliver the play call, your pre-snap process and how you diagnose things into the play. You’re coaching all this stuff, and then you have a throw and an impending hit and then we just stop talking. That’s where my training was as a coach up until this point. So training, follow through and how to protect yourself while getting hit so that you can continue to play is something that’s applicable for everyone. They haven’t trained me how to do the tutorial. I think that’s when it will really start to take shape because I’ll just be knocking individuals over that are much bigger than me. But season one, let’s leave it to the experts and let somebody else beat him up a little bit, but it’s been very positive in terms of controlling what we can control and how to go along the process of injury prevention as best we can.”
(Whose idea was it for QB Tua Tagovailoa to enter into that training? Was it something you guys jointly came up with?) – “It’s really hard sometimes for me to even to remember the etymology for things like that. I know Coach (Darrell) Bevell was spit-balling some problem-solving things that we could do because he hadn’t been along this territory as well. Dave Puloka and Kyle Johnston were very involved in all this stuff. But really, it’s amazing what can happen when you’re not focused on who gets the credit. I think everyone, and because of that, no one. Does that make sense? It’s everyone’s idea so it’s no one’s idea. That’s deep, right, hashtag deep.”
(Can you be more specific and sort of paint me a picture of what this training looks like?) –“I mean, come up here. (laughter) Just picture this. It’s a lot of strategic falling that is patterned after things that happened to our quarterbacks during the season. So kind of recreating those things because the master of jujitsu had to study some game tape to understand how he was falling, where the impact points were and what we could do to help correct it. By and large, you find out that core strength is very much important when you’re talking about the transfer of energy of the human body going to the ground and different things that you can do to minimize that are strategic, but then strengthening of the core so that when you’re going to the ground, the top of your torso isn’t just a leverage whipping device. I think there’s a bunch of different movements. I’m sure they have names. I couldn’t describe them adequately. The best thing I have is, yeah, they’re getting taken to the ground in the fashion they got taken to the ground in as best replicated in the course of their playing experience.”
(Are you going to hand out white belts to everybody?) – “No, black belts. I mean, we’re not dabbling in this to be novices. You know, we’re trying to own it.”
(Speaking of that versatility defensively that you were talking about, is LB Andrew Van Ginkel at inside linebacker which was reported by the league-owned network?) – “Report away. I know from an offensive standpoint, when you have an edge player that will in packages or maybe a game or maybe no games have the ability to play off-the-ball backer; that in terms of identification for how you pick up protections and those things are very important. Not to mention the fact that you can – position flexibility allows you to have an extra human being at each position on game day. A little two-for-oner. So I think on top of just understanding all of the defense, it’s instrumental because every piece of the puzzle has to cover at some point and then understanding rush patterns and all those things; it’s beneficial to a guy that we thought – that led by Vic (Fangio) and really just our entire defense staff – thought that he was at the point of his career where he could handle and it’s advantageous for us, tough for the opponent. So sounds like a win. Full circle.”
(The NFL is going to allow a third quarterback now in emergency situations. What are your thoughts on that rule change?) – “I think there’s a shared sentiment among fans, coaches, players. When we watch a football game, we’d prefer to see a quarterback playing the position of quarterback. I think that rule lends that to be a capability of teams so makes sense to me and I’m all for it. I fit in that pool with everyone else.”
