Rival official claims his team didn’t see anything ‘special’ in Mike McDaniel during its coaching search

The Miami Dolphins hired an exciting young coach to be their new leader in Mike McDaniel.

McDaniel, who was the offensive coordinator for the San Francisco 49ers last season, has been heralded as something of an offensive mastermind. Miami’s decision to bring in McDaniel is another chapter in a trend where organizations put an emphasis on hiring youthful coaches as opposed to established veterans.

Despite that, one rival official recently claimed that his team did not see anything all that impressive in McDaniel during its own search for a new head coach. The quote came in an article reviewing the fact that out of all of the teams with head coaching vacancies this offseason, the Dolphins were the only organization to bring in McDaniel for an interview.

“One peculiarity about the McDaniel hire — for better or worse — is that none of the other eight teams with coaching openings interviewed McDaniel,” Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald wrote.

“I asked an official involved with one of the other coaching searches why this was the case.

“‘He wasn’t a play caller,’ that official said. ‘Not that he can’t call plays, but he hasn’t done it for a season. It didn’t register with us to bring him in. I didn’t see anything that we thought would be special. We wanted an offensive-minded head coach with play calling experience.’”

Given that intel, the hiring decision may raise some eyebrows. That is especially true considering the fact that Miami’s front office does not have the most impressive track record when it comes to hires.

However, McDaniel and Miami’s front office have certainly done a nice job of boosting the amount of talent on the team’s roster so far this offseason. The team has brought in players like Terron Armstead, Chase Edmonds and Tyreek Hill to bolster the talent on the offensive side of the ball.

Now, as the upcoming season inches closer, it will soon be McDaniel’s job to prove that he knows what to do with all that talent. Hopefully, he’ll prove the unnamed rival wrong.