In his short time as the head coach of the Miami Dolphins, Mike McDaniel has captured the attention of many because of his personality.
He seems to be one of the more unorthodox coaches in all of football.
The Athletic’s Matt Barrows recently profiled McDaniel, and he revealed an interesting coaching method that the 38-year-old used during his time with the Cleveland Browns as a wide receivers coach.
“Before the 2014 season, he was teaching [Andrew] Hawkins and the other receivers to cleanly get off the line of scrimmage,” wrote Barrows. “He didn’t show them film of shifty wideouts. Instead he put on clips of point guard Allen Iverson, whose unique cross-over move routinely left defenders flailing as he flew by.”
Hawkins revealed what some of those conversations were like with McDaniel.
“It was, ‘Think basketball at the line of scrimmage. Don’t think football,’” Hawkins said. “We would talk basketball. And he made it very simple for us and he essentially drilled us and taught us two versions of a release. And, ‘Here’s when you use them, and if you do it they will work every single time.’”
The unusual technique apparently had lots of success.
“Hawkins insists the technique worked so well that none of the Browns wideouts who went through the offseason with McDaniel was jammed a single time that year,” wrote Barrows.
This method is certainly very interesting. Iverson was a fantastic scorer throughout his lengthy NBA career and is regarded as one of the niftiest players in the history of the league. His crossovers were absolutely lethal.
Throughout his career, the Hall of Famer averaged 26.7 points, 3.7 rebounds and 6.2 assists per game. He was named an All-Star a total of 11 times.
After coming over from the San Francisco 49ers, McDaniel is surely hoping to help the Dolphins make it back to the postseason. The team has not made it to the playoffs since the 2016 campaign.
It seems like changes could be coming soon to the team’s roster.
Miami recently announced its entire coaching staff for the upcoming 2022 season. One can only wonder if some of the coaches on McDaniel’s staff will end up using some other unique techniques throughout the course of the 2022 campaign.
