Mike McDaniel last among active coaches with challenges (but Reid, Campbell aren't perfect)
Josh Allen threw an illegal forward pass and got away with it.
Baker Mayfield threw a ball away after being sacked and got away with that.
That was the cost of doing business for Chiefs coach Andy Reid and Lions coach Dan Campbell this past weekend. Had both coaches thrown their red challenge flags, it’s a near certainty their appeals would have led to overturned calls. The fact that both of their teams overcame those miscalculations and advanced to Sunday’s conference championship games doesn’t mask the (pardon pun) challenges coaches face with these split-second decisions.
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Which hardly is news to the Dolphins.
Suffice it to say that the challenge system, in place since 2000, has been to the Dolphins what that Alabama judge was to Joe Pesci in “My Cousin Vinny.” Neither takes kindly to objections.
The Dolphins are 53-75 all-time in challenges, a winning percentage of just .414.
Mike McDaniel. who went nearly his entire rookie season without a successful challenge, is 3-10 over two years, 2-5 this season. McDaniel’s .231 success rate is the lowest among active head coaches, with Buffalo’s Sean McDermott (.303) and Cincinnati’s Zac Taylor (.353) not much better.
Only three Dolphins coaches have more calls overturned than upheld: Joe Philbin (10-9), interim coach Dan Campbell (3-0) and Tony Sparano (8-7). At the other end of the spectrum are Dave Wannstedt (11-22) and Nick Saban (4-8).
Teams have extra sets of eyes on replays high above stadiums to advise coaches on challenges, but it’s hardly an infallible system, especially when your emotions say one thing and your eyes are trying to tell you something else. It’s challenging enough at normal speed, but teams, naturally, hustle to get the next play off if they fear a replay isn’t going to benefit them. And sometimes, networks don’t immediately show the definitive angle.
Put it together and the NFL as a whole whiffs more than it hits. Thus far in the 2023 season, coaches are 65-79 on challenges, a .451 percentage.
The best at it? Brian Daboll of the Giants (7-3 for his career), Dennis Allen of the Saints and Raiders (11-7) and Kyle Shanahan of the 49ers (21-16). (Indianapolis’ Shane Steichen is 3-1 after one season.)
As the divisional round showed, sometimes the pitfalls aren’t a matter of throwing a challenge flag when you shouldn’t but holding back when you should.
Early in the Bills-Chiefs game, Josh Allen faced a third-and-17 situation when he scrambled over the line of scrimmage, then passed Ty Johnson, creating an optical illusion. Although Allen was ahead of Johnson when he released the ball, replays showed it actually was not a lateral but an illegal forward pass. Allen released his pass at the 26½-yard line; Johnson caught it at the 27. With the Bills hustling to snap the ball again, Reid opted not to challenge and possibly force Buffalo to punt. The Bills ended up scoring a field goal on the drive.
In the third quarter of the Lions-Buccaneers game, Tampa Bay’s Mayfield threw the ball away as he was going down, but replays showed his calf hit the ground with the ball still in his hands for what should have been ruled a sack. Campbell, the Lions’ coach, did not challenge, which could have been costly. Instead of facing a third-and-long, Mayfield then found Rachaad White on the next play for a touchdown and a 17-17 tie before the Lions scored back-to-back touchdowns in a 31-23 win.
McDaniel, for one, traveled a long road before he finally got the best of the officials. It wasn’t until the 2022 regular-season finale against the Jets that he threw the red flag and got any satisfaction. A Joe Flacco pass to Garrett Wilson really was incomplete. Officials took back those 9 yards they’d mistakenly given New York.
Don’t think McDaniel didn’t know his streak had been broken.
“I was actually saying that on the headset, because I was very aware of that,” McDaniel said postgame. “I had a feeling, and I was like, ‘You know what? How fitting would this be if I finally get one right, and it’s the 18th week, 17th game, fourth quarter.’ Like the rest of the locker room, I just was battle-tested, tried to learn from my mistakes.”
Dolphins reporter Hal Habib can be reached at hhabib@pbpost.com. Follow him on social media @gunnerhal.
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This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Miami Dolphins' Mike McDaniel is NFL-low 3-10 on career challenges
