Dave Hyde: As Dolphins keep winning, Mike McDaniel is all the fashion

Here’s where Amazon missed the bus on Black Friday: Mike McDaniel entered the stadium in a sherpa jacket that made a snappy fleece statement before the Miami Dolphins’ game against the New York Jets on Amazon Prime and the jacket wasn’t immediately featured for sale on its website.

Why didn’t Amazon market that marketing gold?

Matched with dark shades, trendy-white headphones and an upturned fleece collar against the November cold, McDaniel turned heads as a football fashionista. He looked both playoff-ready and runway-ready in the Dolphins (8-3) win.

It was the best look in the sports weekend, maybe the best look anywhere outside of Fashion Week on the other side of New York’s river.

Fashion, like football strategy, is cyclical and McDaniel didn’t just bring back the spectre of Jets icon Joe Namath rocking a fur coat on the sidelines in the 1970s (to be sure, Amazon has that autographed photo for sale on its site for a cool $572.99).

McDaniel also staked claim in the fertile fashion homeland as the No. 1 seed as the best-dressed coach in sports, if such a title still exists considering the depleted state of the coaching look.

Most NFL coaches dress these days like they’re on their way to Denny’s, which is a look any sportswriter recognizes. This coaching trend is only partially due to Bill Belichick’s hooded and chopped-sleeve look that’s thankfully going the way of the New England Patriots. Belichick, too, fell from the tree of Bill Parcells, who wore sweaters that looked like the side of Metro buses.

The other part of this is the coaching stylistic downfall in the NBA. It once was where style ruled. But look at the Miami Heat. Pat Riley brought Armani and hair gel to sports and remains so loyal to fashion he has belt buckles that match each championship rings. Ask LeBron James. He noticed.

Riley’s protégé, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, didn’t even have a proper tie before his first NBA game as an assistant. Riley had to give him one. No wonder Spoelstra favors the sweatsuit look NBA coaches now wear like Tony Sparano set the style.

Enter McDaniel. Not surprisingly, it’s become fashionable to point out McDaniel’s fashion. HBO’s “Hard Knocks,” said the jogger pants McDaniel wears that stop at his calves are unique (fashion check: McDaniel’s one-time workmate, Green Bay’s Matt LaFleur, wears them, too).

Amazon viewers were treated on a Dolphins touchdown drive Friday by the legendary voice of Al Michaels skipping McDaniel X’s and O’s to strike at what really separates him from other coaches.

“Let’s look at what McDaniel’s wearing,” Michael said during the broadcast. “Give me a full-body shot …”

Added fellow game analyst Kirk Herbstreit: “The off-white Nikes are pretty strong play.”

“Very,” Michael said. “He’s got the watch.”

That’s it? “The watch?” It’s a Rose Gold Breitling Navitimer 1952 Quantieme Perpetual that looks like a sun-dial on his wrist and costs a whopping $19,000 new. “The watch?”

Just before Halloween, too, I informed McDaniel about the trendy costume going around where people dress up like him. He was surprised, but even Spoelstra dressed as McDaniel (“I thought I pulled it of pretty well with the glasses. A really cheap watch, though.”)

I asked McDaniel for any suggestions for those dressing up like him.

“Wide shoulders,” he said.

Actually, he looked borderline embarrassed, even flabbergasted, answering that line of questions. It was the first time he seemed speechless since taking the Dolphins job.

“No words,” he said.

The larger question is if looking good factors into playing well. Riley, for one, thought so. But let’s not cross sports with such an important question to the Dolphins season.

Ricky Williams wasn’t known as a snappy dresser, sometimes even sporting the unkempt beard of the, “Australian Tent Look.” But Williams hit the right tone when he said, “If I get into a good car, I feel good about myself.”

And if you feel good, you play better, right? Did McDaniel entering the Jets stadium in a sherpa jacket help him be the best stylistic version of himself and, therefore, the Dolphins to win, 34-13?

Who’s to say? Defensive coordinator Vic Fangio had a pretty good game in that lumpy sweatshirt he wears. But it’s nice to see a coach resurrect the idea of trendsetting fashion to the point people notice, even if Amazon blew Black Friday by not featuring McDaniel’s jacket in a flash sale.

Football is fickle and fleeting.

Fashion is forever.