Mike McDaniel and his mom, Donna, were unable to talk when they connected on a FaceTime call that early February afternoon. The tears were raw and emotions real as they tried to collect themselves while flipping through a mental scrapbook of triumphs and setbacks.
At 2:46 p.m., Mike was offered the Miami Dolphins’ head coaching job, the culmination of a journey that started as an autograph-seeking kid in Greeley. One minute later, he called Donna.
Everything went from back-of-mind to front-of-mind in seconds. Mostly growing up in a single-parent home, not knowing his birth father. A childhood without significant financial means. Taking out thousands of dollars in student loans to attend Yale. Working as a Broncos intern in 2005. Being fired by the Houston Texans because of unreliability. Confronting his alcohol problem while an Atlanta Falcons assistant. Gaining traction on the San Francisco 49ers’ staff.
“A complete immersion into emotion,” Mike said during an interview with The Denver Post this offseason. “It was hard to think about all the years and all the experiences back to the days when it was her and her alone that knew who I was and was motivating me to be great. The (emotions) all came at once during that call.”
At home in The Villages, Fla., Donna had waited anxiously. From the time he was given his first football helmet and lined the inside with team stickers and wrote in marker, “I will make it!” with an arrow toward the NFL logo, this league was the goal.
On the inside of one of his youth football helmets, Miami Dolphins coach and Colorado native Mike McDaniel lined the inside with NFL stickers and wrote, “I will make it!” (Photo provided by Donna McDaniel)
On the inside of one of his youth football helmets, Miami Dolphins coach and Colorado native Mike McDaniel lined the inside with NFL stickers and wrote, “I will make it!” (Photo provided by Donna McDaniel)
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“We both just cried,” she said. “I knew if he interviewed, he would nail it because he knows what he’s talking about. I knew if somebody took a chance on him, they wouldn’t be sorry.”
The chance begins Sunday when the Dolphins host the New England Patriots. McDaniel, 39, is the pro football equivalent of an overnight sensation 18 years in the making, and the Dolphins — no playoff wins since 2001, the league’s second-longest drought — could be the beneficiary of his knowledge, passion and humor.
“Mike didn’t start on a base,” said Air Force coach Troy Calhoun, who worked with McDaniel on the Broncos and Texans coaching staffs. “He was in the on-deck circle, eager and hopeful. Sheer will and work ethic was how he was able to get to the plate.”
His mom has been the rock through the entire journey.
“Obsessed with football”
Donna McDaniel grew up in eastern Colorado, the daughter of a potato and onion farmer. Married in her 20s, her husband was killed in a car accident. She was 28 when Mike was born in March 1983, a single mother working as a credit representative at Monfort Beef in Greeley and later selling meat for a distribution company.
One of Donna’s goals was to keep Mike busy. Any activity. Any challenge. She just wanted to stimulate the kid. And it was concern-based.
“I put him in everything because I was so paranoid as a single mother and scared he might go off on the wrong track,” she said.
Donna entered Mike into dance at age 5 because she knew it would require a commitment to practice; he couldn’t just show up and excel. Minutes before a Christmas recital, Donna told a nervous Mike to not focus on the audience, but only on her as if she was the only person attending. It worked.
“They took a bow and when he heard that applause, he stood up with a big smile and he kept bowing and they clapped more,” Donna said. “It did a lot for his self-esteem.”
McDaniel was supremely confident in kindergarten, though. His teacher wanted to hold him back a year because he wasn’t “socially ready.” If he knew the answer to a question, he would simultaneously provide the answer and raise his hand. Donna considered it, partly because Mike had not hit a growth spurt, but said she opted against it, “because I didn’t want to ruin his hunger for knowledge.”
Each morning, Mike couldn’t wait to leave for school and each afternoon, he would go straight home, fetch the key on the deck behind the house and stay inside until Donna finished work. After-school daycare wasn’t an option for 6-year old Mike. He didn’t like the provided snacks.
What McDaniel did like in his pre-teens was visiting the card shop in Greeley. “He’s been obsessed with football from the get go,” Donna said, and that included player cards. At the shop, when Mike would arrive, an employee would take a step-stool from the back and place it in front of the display counter so Mike could pick out his cards.
The player cards were the start of Donna’s “Gifts for Grades,” program. Get A’s, get stuff. Period.
“I believe in bribery for children,” she said with a laugh.
Originally, a perfect spelling test equaled sneakers. And then packs and boxes of football cards. And then video games. In elementary school, Donna told Mike if he got all A’s until he turned 16, she would buy him a new car.
“I started getting really enamored with the idea of turning 16,” Mike said. “We weren’t in the business of buying brand new cars so for her to make that aggressive commitment, I knew she meant it.”
McDaniel received the 1999 red Mustang on March 6 and he bought his first tank of gas ($0.89 per gallon, Mike remembered) at the corner of Quincy and Parker Roads in Aurora. His first B soon followed.
By that point, the McDaniels had moved to Aurora. Mike met Broncos assistant video coordinator Gary McCune after a training camp practice in which Mike lost his Charlotte Hornets hat. McCune bought him a new hat and invited his family to practice. McCune and Donna would marry (and divorce 10 years later) and Mike was exposed to the NFL as a ball boy while attending Smoky Hill High School.
In his 10th grade year, McDaniel started putting together a list of preferable colleges. He wanted to go out-of-state, mostly because he had not traveled much; his first plane ride wasn’t until he was 13. The list started at 50 schools, then cut down to 30 and eventually 13 schools, evenly distributed by geographic area. McDaniel paid the $60 application fees.
“I just decided, ‘Take out some student loans and hit the ground running,’” he said.
McDaniel got into Yale on the basis of his academics and then sent a highlight tape to the football coaches. He joined the team and the experience fueled his passion for the sport.
“He called me during his sophomore year and said, ‘I just know I want to do something in football,’” Donna said.
Mike graduated from Yale and paid off his student loans by age 32. He had the diploma and now needed a job.
”Brilliant, brilliant kid”
Through McCune, McDaniel knew then-Broncos coach Mike Shanahan and drove to the facility to ask for a letter of recommendation. Shanahan offered him an unpaid internship, so McDaniel moved back home to live with Donna during the 2005 season.
McDaniel was a stay-until-any-hour, do-any-task employee. Coaches would see him as they were leaving late at night … and when they returned the next morning, not completely sure if he had gone home.
“Remarkable dedication,” Calhoun said.
McDaniel cites Calhoun and quarterbacks coach Pat McPherson as significant early-career influences. They answered every question. They gave him projects. They fed his inquisitive nature. And they coaxed him into a jogging club for assistant coaches before games.
“He was incredibly bright, a tremendous hard worker and had a great demeanor,” Calhoun said. “The passion and interest he had, quite frankly, it inspired me.”
McDaniel’s main job was drawing up the scout-team cards, total entry-level labor and he loved every minute of it.
“I look back and roll my eyes because (Calhoun) had to be so patient with me and I had a million questions that not everyone would take the time to answer, and that really showed me what humility was in the profession,” he said. “Once I annoyed Troy too much, Pat was the next guy I went to.”
McDaniel made a positive impression on offensive coordinator Gary Kubiak, who brought him to the Houston Texans in 2006 as a coaching assistant. Calhoun was the Texans’ offensive coordinator in ’06 and McDaniel sat next to him in the coaches’ box. It was in Houston that McDaniel first worked with Kyle Shanahan, who was the NFL’s youngest position coach and, in ’08, the youngest offensive coordinator.
Shanahan and McDaniel, two Colorado guys, hit it off, but as Kyle ascended, McDaniel was dealt a setback of his doing — fired by the Texans after oversleeping several times and reporting late for work.
McDaniel was hired by the UFL’s California Redwoods, which later became the Sacramento Mountain Lions. A setback, for sure. But …
“I was still being paid to be a coach for a team that was playing professionally,” McDaniel said. “I saw it as an opportunity to have more reach — there were only four coaches on the offensive staff. That was my first taste of game-planning and it really helped me in the progression of my career. There wasn’t the pressure you feel in the NFL so you could try innovative things with fewer consequences. That was liberating and set a nice foundation for me.”
McDaniel returned to the NFL with Washington (Mike Shanahan was the coach, Kyle Shanahan the offensive coordinator) in 2011, starting 11 consecutive seasons working with Kyle. McDaniel was an offensive assistant for two years and was promoted to receivers coach.
McDaniel followed Kyle to Cleveland (receivers coach in ’14) and Atlanta (offensive assistant in 2015-16). During his Falcons stay, McDaniel received in-patient treatment for depression and alcoholism.
“It was something between him and his drinking and nobody was going to fix it for him and he just said, ‘I’m not going to do it anymore,’” Donna said. “He was so much more focused (once he got sober), definitely. And he had a clearer vision.”
McDaniel followed Kyle Shanahan to San Francisco after the 2016 season, serving as run-game coordinator from ’17-20 and offensive coordinator last year. McDaniel’s profile rose as the 49ers reached the Super Bowl after the ’19 season and NFC title game last year.
“I remember saying to him, ‘Just watch: One day, you and Kyle will be coaching against each other in a Super Bowl,’” Donna said. “Wouldn’t that be something?”
Mom provided foundation
McDaniel calls Donna, “Pretty much the foundation of my entire human existence.”
Read that comment over the phone, Donna said: “That makes me cry. We just depended on each other and that’s not such a bad thing.”
Donna is all about the Dolphins. She records every NFL show on television and she watches all of Mike’s news conferences. She expects to attend Sunday’s game with Mike’s wife, Katie, and their daughter, Ayla, who turns 2 next month.
“I have no doubt he’s going to do well,” Donna said. “I remember him as a little kid and we would go watch the Broncos practice and he just wanted to be on the other side of the rope.”
Mike has been inside the NFL ropes for nearly two decades, each stop valuable in his maturation. After Mike was hired, the Dolphins acquired receiver Tyreek Hill to spark the offense. Mike will be a first-time play-caller.
Each time he addresses the team. Each time he leads a staff meeting. Each time he will lead the Dolphins out of the tunnel, he will be leaning on what he observed from Donna.
“The person I’ve become, my work ethic, my resolve, my personality, my self-confidence — all of that I can trace back to my upbringing,” he said. “My principles and the things that are important to me were really shaped by watching her completely devote herself as a single mother, working all the time to make ends meet, acknowledging the fact my dad wasn’t around — and bearing that burden — and instilling utter belief in myself.
“Those things are the tools I got to witness day in and day out from her.”
