Mike McDaniel – October 23, 2023
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Monday, October 23, 2023
Head Coach Mike McDaniel
(I want to ask you about LB David Long Jr., is he in concussion protocol after the hit? Does OL Isaiah Wynn’s quad look like a multi-week potential IR type of thing?) – “David Long (Jr.) was cleared last night. Just the timing of which didn’t – he came back out to the sidelines at the end of the game, but once he came back out from the locker room, he would have had to go through an entire warmup process. In the timing of the game, it didn’t make much sense. He came in today and cleared again and reported no symptoms so he should be good to go. And you asked about?”
(OL Isaiah Wynn, is it a multi-week quad potentially?) – “We are getting more information, but it does look like it will be weeks, as it wasn’t a bump or a bruise. We’ll gather more for specificity, but it doesn’t look like we’ll be seeing him for weeks.”
(Any worries about WR Jaylen Waddle and the back injury lingering?) – “It’s something that we’ll be on the front end of trying to treat it. He seems like – from the information that I have today, I would expect him to be practicing. It looks like he’ll be alright. They found a solution and got it loose, which is why he was able to come back in the game.”
(We understand that the Miami Dolphins are going to be on Hard Knocks In Season.) – “Yeah? You guys heard that?”
(Yeah, we heard that.) – “I heard that too.”
(What’s your reaction?) – “I wouldn’t call it a team decision. But at the same time, you guys know me well enough that I steer clear of worrying about things that we can’t control. It’s something that I conveyed to the team for the first time today, and I see some positives with this particular team, just knowing that there’s a lot of things in terms of when we do have success on the field, that people kind of are curious as to how that happens. I think they’ll see exactly where that comes from. I don’t think it’s a bad thing for people to see our day-in, day-out hard work. I know there’s a lot of guys on this team that will garner interest, really. I think that a platform for them to showcase who they are and really the fanbase to get to know the players and coaches better, I can understand the value to the National Football League, to HBO, to NFL Films, and I can understand the value for the Miami Dolphins. It’s something that I think that this particular team is equipped to handle, just because the focus of really how they go about their day-in day-out jobs. I’m also very proud of this organization, having been in multiple. I know that this is, from the top down, a very healthy, all moving in one direction organization that I think it’s not bad for the organization to be seen as that, because it’s a cool place to work. We will take it for exactly what it is and make sure that we use it only to our advantage. It’s not a bad thing to – in the National Football League, the bottom line is if you’re getting done what your whole mission statement is, it’s going to be done under a spotlight. So getting used to having a weekly spotlight for this young team isn’t necessarily a bad thing either.”
(Have the cameras started rolling? Or when will they start rolling?) – “Well, I mean, you tell me? Are they rolling? (laughter) There’s not a ton of information that has come our way as of yet. I know it will start sometime after we take our trip to Germany. Then, as I understand it, it will be through the finality of the season. It will be part of our DNA really after the Germany game at some point.”
(I know after you played in Buffalo, WR Tyreek Hill mentioned on his podcast that the crowd noise was a factor. I know you guys had a couple of pre-snap delays and false starts. Did you feel like the crowd, on the road, that environment, had any impact on maybe the flow of the offense?) – “I mean, most certainly that’s something that you’re working through. There are additional variables that have to do with changes in lineup that compound that. But that’s something that I think you have to be very accountable. You can’t just point fingers, and you have to look at what you’re doing. As a group, the same way that you attack pre-snap penalties in the offseason is the same way that you attack those type of things with regard to hostile environments. It’s not going anywhere. If you’re playing in big time games, that will always be the case. So it’s valuable reps that we definitely fell short of doing our standard. That’s part of the evolution as you go through a season that you’re trying to be your best at the end of the season. You’ve got to progress to that. So it’s one of the many things that we have to work on.”
(Day after, the run game, what is your assessment of it? Should you have run more, could you have run more? I saw last night you said you were behind the chains a little bit and that Philly did a good job. Your day after assessment?) – “Probably the biggest opportunities that we kind of squandered just so happened to be in the run game. We had some details that were just a hair off that were negative plays that through our lens, we see as explosive opportunities. That’s a vast difference that greatly affects your overall production, so for the most part, we’ve been pretty locked into our opportunities and have taken advantage of them in the run game, and last night we didn’t. So you have to assess why, and you can’t do that without giving credit to the Philadelphia Eagles that were playing a version of themselves that is aggressive, that’s a talented front. They weren’t hesitating at all, so when you play a talented front that is aggressive by nature, you have to be on your p’s and q’s, and when you’re not, it takes opportunities away. It takes the amount of run calls away. The complexion of the game changes, so there’s a lot of things to take away from it. I didn’t see a situation where it was like, ‘OK, we can’t block people at all.’ But we were getting some negatives that we’d gotten used to this season as being substantial gains that definitely affected our overall production for sure.”
(I wanted to address the OL Isaiah Wynn situation. Obviously having all backups on the left side of your line is not an ideal situation. How did OL Lester Cotton perform? Is OL Robert Jones ready to be contributing to a game?) – “I think Lester (Cotton) is a very accountable person and has come as far as really anybody that we’ve had on the roster since he joined the team last year. I think it’s a tough spot to be in – to go out there and perform against a front like that. There’s some stuff that I know he can do better that he would do better if he had the whole practice week as the starter. So first and foremost, I believe in the player and lost zero confidence in him, but he’ll be the first one to say that there’s some stuff that he would expect to be better at. And Rob (Jones) has been working his tail off to get in the position that he’s in right now to be able to actively play, so like I said from the beginning, we are fortunate to have depth and I look forward to Lester getting a lot more reps at the position during the week. Because the whole operation, the success that we’ve had up front has all come down to the most minute details that relate to the exact specific techniques and fundamentals of the defensive front. So when you are locked in on that, not only are you cerebrally locked in, but you’ve bought some well-intentioned, deliberate, physical reps to kind of get that down. It’s a game of inches. That cliché is real because that’s where our production comes from. Lester is well-prepared for the situation, so is Rob. They’ll be their best selves starting the whole week off with first-team reps as opposed to getting them mid-second quarter or whatever it was.”
(ESPN reported that CB Jalen Ramsey might play this week. What do you need to see out of him?) – “I mean, if ESPN reported it… (laughter) I just always find it interesting when I get that. There’s no judgment there. I think Jalen (Ramsey) had a great practice week, henceforth he got scout team player of the week on defense and was in a camo jersey on Friday. So not in the business of crystal balls, specifically with guys returning from injury, so we’ll take that a day at a time to make sure we don’t get ahead of ourselves. When he’s ready to go – he can’t help himself, he will let me know.”
(There’s nothing physically at this point then? It’s just him getting back into football shape? Getting confidence in the knee, is that correct?) – “Yeah, there hasn’t been any sort of setbacks or any – there’s no concern. It’s really just you have a process that you go through, and you don’t try to get ahead of yourself so we don’t rush the process. He’s done such an unbelievable job getting to this point that you don’t want to nonsensically just force an issue just because you want him on the field as fast as possible. You’ve got to do right by the team and the player, but you’re right. There’s been nothing that’s been cause of concern or hesitation so far.”
(With the scout team last week, is it possible that he can be with the base defense this week?) – “Yeah, I would see that as a natural progression to start garnering reps and that will be part of the process. It was the first week, so we tried to keep him away from that. This week, the plan as of today which is Monday – which is very different than Wednesday – but as of today, Monday, we’d start working him into defensive team reps to see how he responds to that and dust off the old cobwebs.”
(If I could maybe get into your head a little bit, you talked about CB Jalen Ramsey and him wanting to be out there on the field. Can you maybe take me into what that looks like for you process-wise on when you’re ready to put him out there given he’s beating recovery time, he’s obviously urgent but you need him for the rest of the way?) – “That’s why you have to – that gets overwhelming to try to predict the future in terms of what’s right and what’s wrong. It’s a little out of my expertise and that’s why you literally have to take it day to day. You have to. So you can say, ‘Alright, well, today we know we can assess x-amount of reps.’ You get those reps and then you get the feedback so that you don’t – you don’t want to create a scenario where a player is saying, ‘OK, well I’m going to go play in this game,’ and then all of a sudden something maybe they can feel that we can’t test, now all of a sudden maybe, because of obligation to what they said they were going to do, they start making decisions for the wrong reasons. So you fight tooth and nail not to pinpoint OK, this game, so that you can protect people from themselves, as well as make it about something that it shouldn’t be. We’re not getting him back to play a certain game. We are getting him back to play football the way he knows how to play football, to do right by him as a player and by the team and make sure that’s a long-term solution and not a short-term. It’s kind of why inherently – I mean, I get annoyed when I have to speak in grayness more than you guys get annoyed listening to it – but it’s very pragmatic and intentional, because you don’t want to be chasing the wrong things. We’re trying to get him back so that we can have Jalen Ramsey and not some other version that he’s forcing his hand on.”
(You talked last week about measuring stick type of games. You’ve had a couple this year that you’ve fallen short on, and I know there’s many more to come. As a team, what do you see as a common theme of why you haven’t been able to, at least this season, get over the hump against the couple of real quality, I guess elite-type teams that you’ve faced this year? What can you take from that moving forward?) – “I think it’s more like winning and losing games – this just in, I think you guys might know the only team to do it, win every game. For the record, it was the Dolphins in 1972. I told the team this before on Saturday night. I said, ‘OK, after the game, one of two things will occur. If we win the game, we are going to have to deal with a whole ton of hype, and will be crowned as, it wouldn’t surprise me to be, the best team football and that would be the carrying narrative. If we lose the game, we can’t beat good teams. That is just quite literally the nature of just going into the game and we’re playing a 5-1 opponent, and just knowing how things progress. There’s a whole week in between games, and there’s a lot to talk about and a lot of interest. So the narrative is going to be one or the other. Understand that literally either narrative matters nothing. Because we’re going to play this game – if we win it, I don’t want false sense of security. And if we lose it, I don’t want us to make more of it than it is. Bottom line is, listen, that team was in the NFC Championship game, won it, was in the Super Bowl and had their chance to win the Super Bowl last year. That is a heartbreak, and they’re on the heels of their first loss and it’s a tough environment. You have to earn those wins. Ultimately, as a football team, we’re trying to progress to the point that doesn’t matter where we play or who we play, that you’re able to win those games. So we have to learn stuff from the game regardless of the outcome. So I know the narrative is going to be there, and it’s going to be there until we beat a team with a really good record. The Eagles would have been dealing with the same thing if they would have lost that game, because that was the first five-win team they beat, or four-win team they beat was us. So that’s kind of the nature of the reality that is, listen, you are your results, and until you prove otherwise, you’ve got to be willing to hear the consequences of the results. I hear that and I know that we’ll continue to hear that until we change it. The most important thing to me is that we come out of that game with learning lessons to give us more confidence moving forward. I sensed a football team that knew exactly why they lost. Felt like it didn’t surprise them that they lost, because you didn’t do the little things that you have to do to win the football game against a really good team. And that just builds up hunger. We’ll see how we apply that this week against the New England Patriots, which is literally the only thing, amongst all the things, the only thing that matters to us.”
(I did want to ask a follow up about Hard Knocks. You said it wasn’t a team decision. What are the concerns about opening yourself up to the world?) – “I think it’s more of as a football coach, there’s enough distractions that you have to overcome, just in general, and in the natural – just the world that we live in and trying to get an entire team moving one direction. So I think that’s the immediate resistance. And then also some of the stuff that you don’t know until the decision is kind of made for you, that you’re worried about the some of the football competitive advantages leaving the building and being more accessible. I think in our short talks with the league and HBO, we’ve had that concern suppressed knowing that we’ll be able to protect our team and anything that’s a competitive disadvantage that may come up, we’ll be able to keep that from hitting the final copy. But outside of that, that’s why I kind of think that this particular team, I’m very, very proud, happy with just how we go to work every day. So this particular team, it’s not the worst thing in the world, because that’s what I think will be conveyed. You’re also just used to your routine, and that’s different. So you want to make sure that everything that you’ve been building stays true, and I think it will with our guys.”
(How is S Jevon Holland doing?) – “Jevon (Holland), he was cleared in the game, which is why he went back, by the UNC into the game. And then the standard procedure for that is the following day, you have a follow up. In that, he did report symptoms, so he will be in the concussion protocol which is something that we’ll work through and just worry about him getting healthy.”
(Going back to the keeping secrets in house part of this whole thing with Hard Knocks, what is the process if there’s something that’s maybe borderline issue, does a team get with HBO and you’ll work it out amicably together? Or does the team say no, this doesn’t go to on the air?) – or as a team, say no this doesn’t go on air?) – “I think the former is the way I understand it, that this is – also keep in mind, and this is something I had to be reminded of, but NFL Films is heavily involved and invested in this process. That’s one thing I can attest to just watching from when I was five years old, how their first and foremost objective is to document and document history and how good of a job they do with that. So this will be a working relationship, so it should be very amicable as I understand it.”
