Here’s hoping this grand experiment of Mike McDaniel works, and never simply to point out there’s one other approach of main a soccer group in addition to the drill-sergeant dinosaur from an antiquated time earlier than gamers painted fingernails and received pedicures.
It’s additionally as a result of soccer sounds enjoyable with the brand new Miami Dolphins coach. That’s a phrase you hardly ever hear round soccer. Fun. And it’s mentioned with the understanding nobody is aware of if McDaniel could be a profitable head coach.
We don’t know whether or not he can name performs, a lot much less command a room, corral a group that’s misplaced three straight video games or deal with the, “5 issues that come throughout your desk every single day that don’t have anything to do with soccer,’ as Nick Saban put one among his roles.
Here’s what we all know: Players like McDaniel. That’s a begin. You’re not going to get any participant to confess to disliking their boss, in fact. But the Dolphins gamers do one thing odd for professional soccer gamers when discussing their coach.
They smile. They can’t assist it. Quarterback Tua Tagovailoa even admitted to calling him, “Mystic Mike.” Why?
“Just like Conor McGregor, this dude, he loves to predict stuff,” Tagovailoa mentioned.
The Dude. That sounds proper for McDaniel. It’s straight out of Jeff Bridges’ anti-establishment character in “The Big Lebowski.”
There is an reverse high quality to McDaniel compared to his scowling Dolphins predecessor, Brian Flores. But let’s not overdo that. Flores might coach. And Tagavailoa speaks for many teammates in saying each earlier coach on his timeline was, “arduous on me,’ he mentioned.
His dad. His highschool coach. Alabama coach Nick Saban. Flores. All of have been dictator coaches.
“Mike is a bit of totally different,’ Tagovailoa mentioned. “Mike is at all times attempting to encourage you and attempting to maintain you going, so for me it’s a bit of backwards. I’m used to being arduous on myself and the coach getting arduous on myself and he’s attempting to inform me, ‘Hey, it’s going to be OK. We’re solely in May, solely in June.’ ‘’
That’s as a result of it is just May, and now June, and let’s not faux it’s not by over-reaching on these performs. What’s vital right here is McDaniel and Tagovailoa are married past the way of most coaches and quarterbacks.
For as a lot as this group’s re-done narrative this offseason is how McDaniel is new-age wizard and Tua is The Man, capital letters, let’s keep in mind group proprietor Steve Ross’ grand plan had Sean Payton as coach proper now and Tom Brady as quarterback.
You’d have wanted safety guards on the ticket line in the event that they’d employed them — which means, because it performed out, if Flores hadn’t filed his lawsuit in opposition to the league involving Ross. That ended that concept.
So it’s McDaniel as the most recent coach to usher this group right into a contemporary period the place leaders don’t must bark and chew. The reigning Super Bowl coach, Sean McVay, is thought for being lighthearted at instances, tweeting this previous draft when New England picked guard Cole Strange, “How about that? We wasted our time watching him, thinking he’d be at 104.”
The earlier champion coach, Tampa Bay’s Bruce Arians, was identified for a cocktail hour after video games with gamers and a profitable motto of, “No risk it, no biscuit.”
There are a dozen methods up the mountain, however there’s one thing to be mentioned for the medieval mindset dominating soccer from Vince Lombardi to Bill Belichick sinking into the tar pit. Will McDaniel be a profitable a part of the revolution? Or an instance, as old-school Bill Parcells as soon as mentioned, “Clowns can’t lead.”
No, McDaniel isn’t any clown. His minicamps seem like regular minicamps. He sounds for probably the most half like a coach. Sure, what’s to come back will shake traditionalists. Expect veterans to take a seat out preseason video games. As in all of them, for a few of the veterans.
Also anticipate McDaniel to out-positive anybody with an upbeat drumbeat concerning Tagovailoa. This is in stark distinction to Flores’ tough-love method — and Saban’s at Alabama, too.
“So you’re saying that was a good, deep ball today?” McDaniel mentioned to reporters after Tua’s completion to Tyreek Hill late in Thursday’s apply.
He then detailed how a quarterback can solely throw deep if the offensive line gives the time. That was one downside final yr.
“Put it on social media,’ Tagovailoa mentioned of the cross, cupping his arms like a receiver and looking out over his shoulder as if to catch a superbly thrown cross.
It was a significant cross to the re-invented narrative of Tua, if not significant by NFL requirements. McDaniel seems like he’s breaking by with Tua, who he says is, “opening up.”
“He’s let his guard down, and we’ve been in a position to maintain his confidence excessive, which it ought to be proper now for positive, whereas correcting and getting his recreation higher, which is the last word purpose for everybody,’ he mentioned.
McDaniel, as he mentioned, resides his boyhood dream by being a NFL coach.
“It’s a enjoyable place to go to work,’ he mentioned.
Football retains rising from its caveman tradition, little by little. The Dude is totally different. There’s no query about that. The query is what it at all times is: Can he win?
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Source: www.bostonherald.com