MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — The asides, still quick and entertainingly quirky, remain a staple. Mike McDaniel walked behind the microphones on the first day of Miami Dolphins training camp and …
“Opening statement?” he said. “Hello, Ayla, I love you. There it is.”
Ayla is his young daughter.
“What’re you going to say to a good dad?” he asked reporters.
That was followed soon by a, “YOLO,” when a reporter hesitated asking a question, and “I need a nap after this,” after another question demanding a long answer. McDaniel, true to his personality, remains the NFL coach who doesn’t sound like an NFL coach. And not just to reporters.
“He’s always joking out there,” cornerback Kader Kohou said.
But there were other parts of the first day in the coach’s fourth season that showed small but serious shifts in thinking and ideas to improve on his past few seasons. Over there, if you noticed, were referees at this practice throwing flags and blowing whistles and doing all things referees do in a real game.
That was a change from previous camps.
So was the penalty for such penalties: Post-practice sprints. The picture of recent camps was Dolphins players walking off the field while Washington players ran sprints after a joint practice.
“It’s something we as the players decided,” tackle Austin Jackson said. “If we have pre-snap penalties, we’re going to punish ourselves for that. Things that are in our controllables — that’s what we call them … If you make the mistake in practice, we’re going to self-correct ourselves with a little disciplinary action.”
It’s not like the Dolphins are suddenly some NFL boot camp to reflect some different mindset. But they practiced an efficient 90 minutes mostly in the rain Wednesday, as if to nudge this idea of doing things in a more uncomfortable manner right from the first day of the new season.
McDaniel, discussed the book, “Talent is Overrated,” that he read more than a decade ago and the Dolphins put into play the past three seasons. The involved idea is of having “deliberative practices,” meaning mentally demanding practice that parallels the precise situation you’re trying to do.
“I always believed that, but in practice, I’ve watched it and I think this team has a firm understanding of what that is based on the spring because you learn that anything that’s good in athletics is a product of deliberate practice, quite literally,” McDaniel said.
No, he’s never going to sound like your hum-drum football coach. If he wins this year, he’ll be seen as progressive for a new age in the NFL. But if he loses again, he will be framed as too far out there in a sport of violence and discipline.
That’s far ahead of the first day, just like some of the issues The immediate story of this first practice included reserve offensive lineman Bayron Matos being helicoptered to the hospital and listed in stable condition after staying down on the field at the end of practice. Artie Burns, signed to provide veteran cornerback depth, also left practice on crutches.
Meanwhile, McDaniel must build answers, brick by brick, in this camp. How to get more downfield production from Tua Tagovailoa, Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle? What’s needed so the offseason pieces produce an actual inside running game?
Do they have a starting-caliber cornerback beyond Kohou?
Beyond strategic answers, this camp needs to heal some relationships, too. Tagovailoa, honest and direct as ever, laid out how all’s not good with Hill after the receiver quit in the finale last season and then requested a trade with line, “I’m out.”
“It’s not just with me,” Tagovailoa said. “It’s with a lot of guys. I’m not the only one that heard that. You guys (reporters) aren’t the only people that heard that …
“So when you say something like that you don’t just come back from that with a, ‘Hey, my bad.’ You’ve got to work that relationship up. You’ve got to build everything up again. It’s still a work in progress not just for me, but for everybody.”
The more things change at the start of a Dolphins camp, the more they still revolve around solving so much from the previous season. The culture. The strategy. The relationships.
The stakes are obvious after this regime’s three middling seasons. Three Dolphins coaches in the past two decades — Dave Wannstedt, Tony Sparano and Joe Philbin — entered a fourth season with no playoff wins to provide some benefit of the doubt. All were fired during that fourth season.
McDaniel is a good man, and a good story, but what matters are results. He knows it’s show-me time or there’s no reason to think his fate will be different than those three predecessors.
The good news is no one was late for the new, 9 a.m. practice time. It’s a low bar, but the first day of practice is about low bars. The high bars will come soon enough.
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