Before his second act, the history major inside Mike McDaniel — the one who wrote a senior thesis at Yale on the NFL-AFL merger era of the 1960s and 1970s — might study the cryptic lesson of recent Miami Dolphins coaches and second years.
In his first season, McDaniel was a success. He showed a positive creativity, genuine resourcefulness, won enough to make the playoffs and, maybe above all, filled in the blanks to answer the franchise’s big question: Who is Tua Tagovailoa?
We know now. Tagovailoa is accurate, instinctual, productive, small, average-armed and a constant health concern. Do with that information what you will. McDaniel’s first year provided the franchise that answer.
Which brings us to Year 2.
How did Faulkner put it? The past isn’t dead. It’s not even the past. To that end, there is an oddly regular and rhythmic pattern to previous Dolphins regimes in their second year this millennium. It’s not a pretty one. Go down the list of coaches not named Cam Cameron, who only had one year, or Brian Flores, whose opening years involved a franchise tanking everywhere but on the sideline.
Of the other five coaches, the arrow pointed decidedly up after their first year. Dave Wannstedt won 11 regular-season games and a playoff game. Nick Saban won his last six games to support his rebuild. Tony Sparano inherited a 1-15 team and went to the playoffs his first year. Joe Philbin was knocked out of playoff contention on the last week of the season. Adam Gase made the playoffs even with starting quarterback Ryan Tannehill hurt.
It was, for all of them, their best year as Dolphins coach. It was their only good year in retrospect (even with Wannstedt winning 11 games again in his second season). Each of them believed something special was being built after that first year, too. Remember Sports Illustrated picking Saban to win the Super Bowl in Year 2? Or Sparano passing out, “Feed The Wolf” T-shirts?
Receiver Jarvis Landry, echoing a newfound team bravado before Gase’s second year, predicted the Dolphins would sweep mighty New England because, “They’re not our big brother anymore.”
If this is all coming back to you through the fog of time, so should this, too: None of that good news happened in Year 2. The Patriots remained the Dolphins big brother in Gase’s second year. Saban didn’t end his second year in the Super Bowl but instead left for Alabama.
In Sparano’s second year, quarterback Chad Pennington was hurt early, the great Wildcat offense proved a one-year gimmick and everything that broke right for the team the previous year broke down in his second year. It never got fixed in the Sparano era, either.
Throw in Wannstedt and Philbin and it’s the same, so-Dolphins story: The second year started them down a slippery slope from which they never recovered. Wannstedt loss Miami’s only playoff game in his second season after advancing past the first round the year before and the Dolphins never returned to the postseason under him.
This isn’t to say McDaniel is destined to relive some cursed formula his second year. It’s just to say one good year doesn’t guarantee another. All the optimism has to be tinged with realism that the work isn’t done, not nearly, and there are potholes to step in.
In the past, quarterbacks were often a central issue. Saban picked Daunte Culpepper over Drew Brees. Pennington and Tannehill were hurt. But it wasn’t all quarterbacks. Philbin was overmatched for the job in a manner Bullygate laid out, and Saban says now the pro game wasn’t for him.
Coaching philosophy? That was central to it all. Wannstedt told me, years later, “You can only win so much running the ball and playing defense and special teams. I thought you could coach around the quarterback. You can’t.”
Gase simplified his offense after Tannehill’s injury late in 2016 and made the playoffs with Jay Ajayi and a power running game. He reverted to a pass-happy offense in 2017, just as he liked, even with Jay Cutler at quarterback. That signaled his end.
McDaniel did everything asked in Year One. He brought an innovative manner. He made the playoffs. He got the goods on Tagovailoa. He delivered the idea this is the start of a fresh era. There’s no reason to think he can’t build on what he started and succeed except that was the idea of so many other first-year Dolphins coaches.
Their history lesson for the history major is good to have. But it’s only a start. The harder part is finishing the job.
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