Mike McDaniel – December 31, 2023 (Postgame)
Sunday, Dec. 31, 2023
Postgame – Baltimore Ravens
Miami Dolphins Head Coach Mike McDaniel
On Bradley Chubb Injury Update: “We will have to get more information tomorrow. One of my least favorite things in this sport and for my role is seeing a competitor go down and then have to get a cart. It’s pretty emotional just in general but, we don’t really have the information exactly what it is. We’ll be able to find out tomorrow.”
On the decision making of playing starters late in a lopsided game: “It’s me. I mean, in hindsight, I would absolutely not have one of them out there if I had known that he was going to get hurt, for sure. That’s a known part of the job that I understand fully. It doesn’t look smart at all. The thinking behind it is the same as it kind of was last year against this team in this place, where I think we were down 35-14 at the beginning of the fourth quarter. When you are as close of a team as we are, and you know the players inside and out, there’s times in football games where it’s not about winning or losing or [if we] can come back. It’s about finishing the football game and having a taste of what our expectations were going into it. The team was very confident in themselves going into the game, with good reason. Our expectations fell very short. Hats off to the Ravens for really taking it to us. The guys were very frustrated. I think that my role on gameday is; you know, the players wanted to go back in and play and finish the right way heading into next week. I have the ability to tell them no on everything in this situation. There’s plenty of decisions that I’ll cross examine. It’s hard not to. I do that every week. It’s just with the amount of regard that I hold this position and the decisions I do make. The intent is always purposeful, and I made the call that the guys that went out there wanted to be out there. It’s one of those things that will forever be a part of the job, that as a competitor you understand that the results will always be what you have to be accountable for as they should. It’s not an exact science. There’s a part of it that you do have to literally take all of the information that you do have and make your best decision. I always do that with a high regard for everybody involved. There are times like this one, where it doesn’t look like … I would like to have a time machine for sure in that situation after the events occurred. You don’t know that when you go into it. You do the best you can. I think the players didn’t see the result of the game looking the way it did. They were hungry to get it right, and it didn’t work out for us. Right now, a lot of guys are hurting, as they should be. They’ve invested an unbelievable amount into the season. The biggest thing is that with a locker room like this, with those failed expectations, I know they’re going to grow closer, not farther apart. That’s important in this part of the year because we will have a divisional crown to play for next week. We will have to take everything that we’ve learned good, bad and indifferent and apply it next week. If we had said that after Week 4 or whatever that we’re going to play this Buffalo team again, and it will be the last game of the season for the [AFC East] division crown, I think everyone would have accepted that. That’s some perspective that I talked to the team about. Their eyes were laser focused; they will be eager to wash away this past game. The only way you can do that is to prepare for the next one.”
On CB Xavien Howard’s Injury: “We’ll get more information on that tomorrow. That happened early in the game; we know it has to do with this foot, but we are not exact on what it is.”
On his thoughts about the Baltimore Ravens throwing for touchdowns with such a big lead: “I don’t really have any thoughts in terms of the opposing team’s decision making. When you have a lead of multiple scores, you’re free to do whatever you want. We have to defend it, and we didn’t.”
On where the accountability lies for inconsistent offense play on the road: “I thought we started off fairly consistent. I think with circumstances within the game, there was a play or two where maybe we were forcing something. It did feel a little out of sorts right before the half. You have to really learn from each endeavor appropriately and not lump it into, you know, everything’s independent of each other. They had a good defensive plan. For the whole season, one of the reasons they’ve been so good as a team is defensively [is] they’ve been very opportunistic. We knew that, and ultimately, we played right into their hands. I wouldn’t say that’s a road thing. I look at road things as operations whether we’re getting out of the huddle, the communication and assignment-oriented stuff. I didn’t feel that. Maybe watching the tape, there might be some of that. I don’t know. On the field, it didn’t feel like it was, ‘Man this is something that’s caused because we’re not at home.’ I thought the orchestration of, the cadence, and the various snap counts, and we didn’t have any delay of game penalties or procedural stuff in the first half. I thought we were just going against a good defense. From that perspective, relative to the numbers that we put up this year, maybe it felt a little off kilter. Going against that defense, I thought it was productive enough, if you don’t turn the ball over, and if you’re playing all three phases cleanly. I thought the offense was doing its part. Once the turnovers came, they became a part of the problem, not the solution.”
On the defense allowing six touchdown passes: “Really for me, we pride ourselves on, ‘If you’re going to score, you’re going to have to earn it.’ What I mean by that is we haven’t had a run in touchdown or that many run in touchdowns as we had in this game, which is a function of tackling. It’s to their credit. They had a good game plan and for their players, that are pretty good, in space. I’m confident saying before watching the film, we’re not going to be happy with the way we tackled in open space. We have to get down to the bottom of that. I’m very confident that we will. We have a lot of talented, prideful, invested players that know that they’ve created with the Dolphins this season. We’ll be very highly motivated to get that stuff corrected in a short amount of time. That’s what it takes to get something like that corrected is high motivation because you don’t have that much time to do it.”
On the role of mentality and mental toughness going forward: “It’s everything. Situations like this where you go into a game with full belief in each other and the eventual outcome, but then it ends up monumentally in another direction. It’s a gut check for a football team. I feel very fortunate that I’m not nervous about it. Typically, you get nervous about guys just throwing in the towel because it’s hard to invest. It’s hard to believe and then have things fall short. Human nature is to care less, to maybe point a finger, or be in your little cocoon of security that it’s not your fault. I feel very blessed that we don’t have the people for that formula. Our guys are going to be individually very hard on themselves in a constructive manner. Throughout any NFL season that has been really successful that I’ve been a part of, there’s these types of moments. We’ve had a couple this season that had been pretty wrenching. This is probably the top of the list. Those things can be galvanizers to the ultimate end of your season. If you lean into it as a group, it brings you closer together because you just add to the list of people that don’t believe in you. What are you going to do with that? I think that’s very motivating. We have a lot of people that have chips on their shoulders in general from people saying they can’t do X, Y, or Z. This is the time to lean into that. I’m firmly confident that guys are going to approach it the way I would hope. This has kind of become our standard which is run from nothing. Own it. If you’re trying to do anything worthwhile, you have to assess, ‘Well it this hard?’ It is hard. That probably means this is your opportunity to separate yourself as a team and handle this in ways other teams wouldn’t. Not splintering, staying together which, I think with leaders the captains, the leadership council on this team, we don’t have anything to worry about. We need to recalibrate, get back together and press forward together. That’s the only way that outcomes like this don’t exist is when people really depending on each other and trusting each other and putting their focus and their mind in the appropriate direction, which is what I see all of our guys do time and time again. Expect nothing else.”
On the decision to make RB Raheem Mostert inactive: “That surprised [me]. I think you operate from patterns of past experiences. We’ve been in situations very similar. However, this time, he didn’t progress as much as he had in the past. He still wanted to go and didn’t want to hear that we were going to put him down. It was the best decision for the Dolphins and him because it just didn’t respond. He didn’t really respond the way he had in previous situations. It was kind of unanticipated. Not something I think anybody on offense or defense … There’s so much faith and trust in all of the [running] backs in our running back room that we were excited for the opportunity to try to take this one home for Raheem [Mostert] and for everybody else. It just didn’t work out that way. It was a little unexpected obviously as I talked to you guys throughout the week. We had to do right by him and the Dolphins in the past 48 hours.”
