All Sides of the McDaniel-Shanahan Reunion

49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan provided insight on head coach Mike McDaniel ahead of the Miami Dolphins' trip to San Francisco

Mike McDaniel isn't the first Miami Dolphins head coach to face his previous team in his first season on the job because Don Shula, Jimmy Johnson and Brian Flores all did it before him.

But there's something different in this case.

And that difference is the working relationship McDaniel had as an assistant with San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan, which was unique not only because of its length but because it included so many different spots.

Yes, Flores was an assistant for Bill Belichick for 11 years (plus four years before that in the scouting department) before he took over as Dolphins head coach, but all that time was spent with the New England Patriots.

McDaniel spent 14 years working with Shanahan — for five different teams, as Shanahan kept bringing him along to his next stop.

There were three years in Houston (2006-08), three years in Washington (2011-13), one year in Cleveland (2014), two years in Atlanta (2015-16) and finally the past five seasons in San Francisco (2017-21).

Asked this week about his unique relationship with Shanahan and how their friendship grew over the years, McDaniel started his answer in his own unique way.

“I don’t know, I’m hard to get rid of," McDaniel joked before turning serious. "I think I recognized him as an ambitious coach that got into it to help players. I recognized in him early that he really could help players grow and live out their dreams. He knew more than anybody that I’d been around about football so you try to be a resource and you try not to miss opportunities, especially ones right in front your face. So maybe he felt bad for me or maybe he recognized that I was listening. Either way, it was a great working relationship that I’m very much grateful, indebted and really don’t know where I’d be without it.”

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SHANAHAN DISHES ON ALL THINGS McDANIEL

McDaniel's return to San Francisco, try as he might, clearly is the focus of this matchup between two of the hottest teams in the NFL.

So it wasn't surprising that a good part of Shanahan's media session Wednesday dealt with the McDaniel, their relationship, and what McDaniel has done in his first season as Dolphins head coach.

Here were the highlights:

Q. Now that you’ve taken a little bit more time to look at some Dolphins tape and what Miami Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel has been able to do down there, is it what you expected? Are there some new flashes to things?

Shanahan: “No, it’s what we expected. He’s doing a great job with his personnel. Those two receivers [Miami Dolphins WRs Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle], the speed they have and the good football players they are combined with the speed of [Miami Dolphins RB] Raheem [Mostert] and the way that [Miami Dolphins QB Tua Tagavailoa] quarterback is playing, Tua is playing at an extremely high-level. He’s been doing it since the preseason, big time in week one and hasn’t fallen off at all and they’re doing a good job on defense too.”

Q. Were you watching Mike’s pressers, they were different and did you have an idea that might catch people’s attention? Do you think it helped him maybe get the job?

Shanahan: “I don’t know. You’d have to ask that with their owner because each lemonade stand is different. That’s kind of how I see it. They run it however they want, so I bet it did, because it seemed like they liked him obviously, they hired him, so I’m sure they didn’t dislike it, but that’s Mike’s personality. I never knew how he would do in those press conferences or how he’d come off, that’s how he is all the time to us, even a little bit worse probably. And it’s an acquired taste sometimes or sometimes it throws people off a little bit, but I thought he put it together real good and did in a funny way and is always entertaining in those press conferences.”

Q. It seems like when guys become head coaches sometimes they feel like they have to act a certain way, but did you give him any advice at just being himself? Because it looks like even as a head coach in the elevated role, he’s just being who he is.

Shanahan: “Probably. I don’t think he’s ever asked me specifically that way, but I guarantee my advice to everyone is always you better be yourself. I just think no matter what it is, especially in sports, but I would think anywhere in the world you’re around someone a little more than just here and there everyone can see the reality of someone or the realness and if you ever try to be someone you’re not as a head coach role, whoever it is, media, coaches, players, fans, they’re going to end up eating you alive. You have to be yourself and you can’t keep up with acting.”

Q. You said the other day that you were not surprised that he’s having the success that he’s having right now. In the offseason when they started accumulating the speed guys like Hill and Mostert and all that, did you kind of see that this is coming and what’s it like watching kind of your offense executed with all of that speed? How much does it jump out on you?

Shanahan: “Oh, it’s cool to watch. Right when he got Tyreek, you knew how much that was going to help. Just Tyreek, there’s a number of fast people in this league and to me he’s different than everyone else, probably ever. Just the physicality and speed he runs with. So just some of the things that they can do with him is cool to watch, but the question was watching Tua in the offense and I wasn’t totally sure of that and I remember turning it on in the preseason and watching his first game and I was like, ‘wow, this guy looks totally different and looks very comfortable,’ and then turned it on Week One and I thought he was playing in Week One as good as anyone in this league and I don’t think he’s had a game not like that.”

Have you two been in pretty close contact since he’s been gone?

Shanahan: “Probably as much as Mike and I can, we’re both probably as bad of phone guys as anyone you could be around, but for Mike and I, I’d say yes.”

In all of your years with Mike McDaniel, what was the quality in him that you appreciated and kind of leaned on the most?

Shanahan: “At first, I didn’t know him at all. [Former NFL head coach Gary] Kubiak put him in my office and that’s how it starts, but we were both young guys and I’d done college and had been in the league a little bit longer and he was just really hungry and he was a lot more educated in terms of he went to Yale and I went to some good schools, but it was for sports, so he was very like well-read and typing everything up and I was so much football and he just soaked everything in, memorized everything. And whatever happened, he was someone I could always carry the conversation with what’s going on in the receiver room, really how I saw football and he could soak it all in and he spent three years of that. I went to quarterbacks and he came with me to quarterbacks and then I was the coordinator the third year and he was doing everything we needed for a coordinator in the third year, so we had all the experience together and then he ended up leaving going to World XFL or something like that. And then when I got to Washington, bringing him back, it was just no one had been one-on-one with me that long, so that was kind of the neatest thing about it. And Mike, I’d always say he was our computer like what did I say on this last year at this time and Mike could always retain that stuff and was really good at it. And then we went through so much together, how different Washington was then Houston, just schematically how many things that we had to change. I also think anytime you have a QC, those are the guys as a coordinator you depend on the most. When you’re a coordinator and the players come in, everyone goes to their offices and teaches the players and then you go back in your room and you try to put a plan together and there’s not many people available that aren’t in rooms coaching the tight ends or the o-line. And then you have a guy who’s been breaking down the film all week, not just for his position, but for everything. So the QCs are the guys you rely on more as a coordinator because they’re seeing the whole thing as much as you can, they’re not just preparing a position. And Mike was always in that type of role. I think two years he coached receivers for me, but all the other time, he was a great position coach, but he was more valuable in the other way. I don’t want a guy tied down to one position. That’s kind of what happened to me when I brought Mike LaFleur here. I put him with receivers the first year, but then there’s too many times I’m asking some stuff about the red zone and things on Thursday night and they’re in their world on what [New England Patriots WR Kendrick] Bourne is doing or somebody, I’m like, man, I need you to help me in this area. So sometimes guys want to be position coaches fast and I always say QC might be the best thing for you and sometimes it’s vice versa, but there’s different paths to do stuff and when you do stay in those roles longer, you do get to learn more. You don’t just go right to a position and focus just on that position, so I think that’s stuff that really benefited Mike and that’s why he was the one guy I was always communicating with so consistently over the years.”

How much can his personality or his humor kind of galvanize a coaching staff or players when it’s a very serious job, you guys are so focused, but how can that kind of break it up and kind of help the chemistry of the team?

Shanahan: “It’s about being yourself. If things are going well and your personalities is yourself, then it’s really good. If things are going bad and your personality’s like that, then it might annoy some people or it might say, oh no, they’re too lackadaisical, so it’s more about coaching, right, putting the plan together and being honest with everybody and being yourself. Then you don’t deviate and the reasons are what happened on the field. When you start getting into that being because of people’s personalities, I think that’s a little farfetched. I think a lot of other variables come into that and that’s just a bonus.”

DOLPHINS COACHES VS. THEIR FORMER TEAM

As mentioned earlier, McDaniel isn't the first Dolphins head coach to face his previous team, so here's the rundown of how those games went.

Brian Flores, hired from New England in 2019

2019 at Miami — Patriots 43, Dolphins 0

2109 at New England — Dolphins 27, Patriots 24

2020 at New England — Patriots 21, Dolphins 11

2020 at Miami — Dolphins 22, Patriots 12

2021 at New England — Dolphins 17, Patriots 16

2021 at Miami — Dolphins 33, Patriots 24

Adam Gase, hired from Denver in 2016

2017 at Miami — Dolphins 35, Broncos 9

Joe Philbin, hired from Green Bay in 2012

2014 at Miami — Packers 27, Dolphins 24

Tony Sparano, hired from Dallas in 2008

2011 at Dallas — Cowboys 20, Dolphins 19

Jimmy Johnson, hired from Dallas in 1996 (after a year out of football)

1996 at Miami — Cowboys 29, Dolphins 10

1999 at Dallas — Cowboys 20, Dolphins 0

Don Shula, hired from Baltimore in 1970

36-16 record overall against Colts, including 21-0 victory in 1971 AFC Championship Game

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