Dolphins' Mike McDaniel displays strength in candidly discussing sobriety | Habib

MIAMI GARDENS — This isn’t how it’s done in the NFL. At least not if you’re going by the book. Especially Day One of training camp, it’s all about strength. You’re strong; the guy next to you is strong; everybody is Hercules. Weakness? There’s no weakness in football. Everybody knows that.

Mike McDaniel violated that Wednesday. At least on the surface, he did. He stepped to the podium and without prodding, he spoke about weakness. His own weakness, to be specific: alcoholism.

And with it, McDaniel sounded strong. Stronger than he ever has in such a setting. Because it was in his ability to bring up this subject before all the microphones and cameras, in a setting where it’s possible his message could be misconstrued, McDaniel in essence told us he’s as committed as ever to continue living his life by saying no to the bottle.

There was a time that alcoholism derailed McDaniel’s career, temporarily. A firing in Houston, bottles discovered in the team facility in Cleveland, the smell of alcohol during meetings in Atlanta — all this was holding back a coach everybody said was wasting his smarts.

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Except when Falcons co-workers confronted him, McDaniel showed how smart he was. He accepted their willingness to help him achieve sobriety. In only a few scattered, one-on-one interviews, McDaniel has said he last had a drink on Jan. 4, 2016. A year later, he told USA Today he had “zero desire” to ever drink again.

You can be certain the Dolphins did plenty of research to confirm this before hiring him 1½ years ago.

At his first media session of the 2023 preseason Wednesday, McDaniel, 40, reinforced that in a way you didn’t see coming. Asked a question he has heard before, about his “adversity is opportunity” credo, McDaniel traced it back to his bout with alcoholism, broaching the subject for the first time at the podium.

“The obsessiveness that I have with it (is) probably when I became sober,” he said.

During his three weeks in a treatment facility, where McDaniel also requested help dealing with depression, it dawned on him that he needed to separate things he couldn’t control from things he could.

There was no question about which category picking up a bottle fell under.

“All of a sudden my product as a human being, as a husband, as a coach, was a completely better product and something that I think those lessons really, in that time in my life, sealed the deal for me.”

Dealing with alcoholism made McDaniel better coach, husband, father

It made him a better husband to Katie, a better father to Ayla and a better coach to his players. Today, the Dolphins benefit from it.

Casually during his media session after practice, quarterback Tua Tagovailoa slipped in a tidbit about McDaniel.

“He’s here at like 2 o’clock every morning, you know,” Tagovailoa said.

No, we didn’t know. Unfortunately, there was no opportunity to follow up, to find out if Tagovailoa meant that literally. Or to find out if Tagovailoa knows this because he’s in the building at 2 as well. Still, you get the idea.

Last year was McDaniel’s first as a head coach. It wasn’t perfect. If you follow the Dolphins closely, you know that. There were challenges wasted. Clock-management issues. Reluctance to incorporate the run game.

But the things that went right outnumber the things that went wrong. The Dolphins wouldn’t have made the playoffs, wouldn’t have had one of the most explosive offenses in the league, if that weren’t the case.

If the buck stops at McDaniel’s desk when things go wrong, the same must be true when things go right.

Now?

“Every year of my career that I can remember, my sole focus has always been to be better than the previous year,” he said.

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Last year, the Dolphins lost three in a row, won five in a row, then lost five in a row. McDaniel says he saw how his players responded to his unwavering methods to ride those waves.

“That was the really cool part of last year,” he said. “You find out that although losing five games in a row is pretty miserable, there’s nowhere to hide in that process.”

There was no holding back when the Falcons, including assistant general manager Scott Pioli, confronted him about his drinking. It was a difficult conversation, but so, too, was the one he had when he got home and discussed his state with Katie.

“I took a deep dive into myself and forced myself to realize it’s OK to have problems and work through them,” McDaniel told the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel last year. “Don’t run from them. It’s OK if I love my life and have a bad day or something poorly affects me and I directly address it. Then, voila, depression gone.”

Anyone meeting McDaniel for the first time now might be surprised to learn they’re talking to a man who overcame depression. Besides an ability to connect with others, McDaniel never misses an opportunity to blindside you with humor. It’s one of the first qualities players cite when they talk about what they like about their head coach.

Wednesday was no different. McDaniel was asked to amplify something he’d referred to with the media. What’s one area in which he believes he has improved as a head coach? McDaniel got around to answering it at length, talking about keeping an even keel, but he began with a one-word answer.

He was making a wisecrack but it may have had a grain of truth to it.

“Smiling,” he said.

Dolphins reporter Hal Habib can be reached at  hhabib@pbpost.com and followed on Twitter  @gunnerhal.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Dolphins' Mike McDaniel displays strength in candidly discussing sobriety