Good Vibes In Miami
I’ve been thinking about adding a new section to the Chaometer report this season, the Vibe Check. The intention would be to see how good a team’s vibe is at the moment. Are they winning? Do they seem fun? Do things seem tense? Do things feel…hopeless?
The Dolphins vibes right now are pretty goddamn rotten. Miami might have some of the worst vibes of all. Tua has spent several years either not living up to the hype or getting violently injured. Now he’s taking up a large part of the salary cap and we still don’t know if he’s the guy. Tyreek Hill basically walked out the door to end the season and then sheepishly walked back in. The coach? Well, this was Mike McDaniel at a recent press conference.
I have never self-identified with a football coach more than I did in that moment. But that’s not good vibes!
McDaniel is honestly my dark horse pick to be the first coach fired this year. His main competition is Daboll, who has been gifted a freebie season with a new rookie QB to develop. I think Daboll makes it most of if not the entire season even if things go poorly. The other big threat is Steichen, but now that Jim Irsay is snorting crack in hell, I don’t really know what to expect of his daughter. She might take a bad season (which the Colts will most definitely have) as a good excuse to clean house and reset. But she might also be patient, maybe to simply wait for the offseason to clean up, or be genuinely patient, and let Steichen stick around. McDaniel had such a strong start and things have only gone south. His offense appears to be figured out.
The Dolphins have to get out to a good start if there is to be any hope. Something has to change. Maybe they can’t take down the Bills but they can’t let themselves be outdone by a rebuilding Jets and Patriots. They can’t hope to match the top-heavy AFC but they have to at least reach a wildcard spot. But if I was a Dolphins fan, I’m not sure I wouldn’t have checked out already. Mediocre is a depressing ceiling to hope for when you’ve spent most of the past 2 decades in exactly that position. McDaniel’s teams have never been good against genuine competition and have largely feasted on dregs. It’s a rotten place to be as a football fan, knowing there’s little hope.
Wait! There is hope! I forgot they signed Darren Waller! Nevermind the Dolphins are going to the Super Bowl.
Anyway, you are now closer to death than you were when you started reading this post. Have a great day!
Honestly I get it. There are days when the knowledge that I’m going to die someday is the only thing that gives me solace.
Do you need a hug? I’m sending you a virtual hug right now. If you’re hug-averse, assume a virtual fist bumb.
*Bump. Jeez, I wish I could edit these comments. Or spell.
I just assumed it was a bee joke
I wasn’t sure if I was going to get any football in this season, but my radio app I get the Dolphins Network on started working again.
After listening to that game yesterday evening, I have yet to determine whether or not that’s a good thing. It was also Dark Heresy Night, after being rescheduled from Friday due to our GM working Saturday. Maybe they knew…?
At least iHeart seemed to keep the country music down to a minimum, so there’s that I guess.
Also, my early take on McDaniel was ‘somewhere there’s a Starbucks whose resident hipster barista hasn’t turned up’. Good to have my headcanon confirmed.
You should stand corrected. Good vibes? False. Great vibes. Let’s go.
Why is it great vibes?
Dolphins fan here; I miss Brian Flores. We’re back in 2019 territory, Whirlwound
https://youtu.be/chH8sTCaOL4?si=aGAMq_MVMjcDkCzv
Could be worse. We could be in Cam Cameron territory.
Still, when Rodgers blows up Pittsburgh, we might land Tomlin. I wouldn’t hate that.
Are they even allowed to stop coaching in Pittsburgh for any reason other than retirement?
I’ve heard that owners often like to go in the opposite direction when moving on from a head coach….well….you can’t really get much more opposite from BFlo than with Mike McDaniel!
“Dolphins fan here”
Felipe Carvalo is that you?
There’s not much daylight between Mike McDaniel and Zac Taylor but Taylor has the benefit of having a generational talent at QB as well as multiple playoff appearances and a SB appearance while McDaniel has none of that. Every team wanted the next Sean McVeigh but McVeigh is a genuine genius while these two are good at appearing to be genius.
I wonder how Baptist Health felt about that
Damn why did Irsay go to hell? He was far from perfect but he didn’t seem like a bad guy
Hey Dave, as another Giants fans how bad do you think we need to be for Daboll to get fired before the 2026 season? I wanted him gone this January, but since Mara kept him and we drafted Dart I imagine he and the team would have to be terrible this year in order for him to get the boot before Dart gets to start the season.
I remember when they fired Coughl- oh, I’m sorry, WHEN COUGHLIN SPONTANEOUSLY DECIDED TO STEP DOWN – I remember Mara saying that it wasn’t the losing that bothered him, so much as he felt they stopped responding to Coughlin and that he “lost control of the locker room.”
Personally, I think even if we are 0-8, if Dart goes in and it looks like he’s learning SOMETHING, Daboll will get another year. After all, when Eli went in during that 04 season, they finished off 1-8 after a promising 5-2 start, and it was completely ok because they felt Eli was benefitting. If Dart goes in midseason and loses 9 in a row, I imagine Mara will smile and think that’s ok, as long as the perception is he’s getting experience.
But if there are players giving up, if Daboll is so out of touch that the DC tries to stage a coup and take over (oh wait, not that one, that’s a Mara-approved form of incompetence), Daboll and Dart are constantly butting heads, or if it’s just a vicious drama-filled bleepshow… he’ll probably feel like he has no choice.
BUCKLE UP!
The Eli comparison isn’t good here. Coughlin was also in his first year in 2004, he wasn’t on the hot seat. Patience was easy at the time, the team was on a rebuild. Daboll barely kept his job in January and his seat is hotter than the inside of a microwaved Hot Pocket. If Dart, a project QB that everyone knows is a project QB, goes in midseason, it’s because the team is in freefall and Daboll is trying to save his job. If Dart doesn’t play well after he goes in, Daboll is toast. Daboll isn’t sticking around if Dart goes 0-9 because that means the Giants are probably like 3-14.
Mara even said at the end of last season he’s not sure why he kept them and he isn’t sure the team is going in the right direction. This guy axed Shurmur, Judge, and McAdoo after 2 seasons each. He’s trying to be patient now after those blowups, but that patience is going to run out if the Giants don’t meaningfully improve this year.
I think the Giants need at minimum 6 wins this season and they have to look competitive the whole time for Dabs to have a chance. Maybe Russ does well enough to keep the team afloat, maybe Dart plays well enough to surprise, maybe the defense is great and keeps games close so the team feels like they aren’t far off. If this season looks anything like 2024, everybody’s fucked, rookie QB or no
Look at the bright side Dave, if you are 3-14 you’re gettin Arch in the draft
All signs seem to point to Arch staying all 4 years at Texas so that’s not a given
I agree with everything you said – from *OUR* standpoint as fans – these guys should have been gone last year. Since my opinion is irrelevant in the decision making, I’m trying to gauge Mara’s standpoint… and I 100% believe he will hesitate if Dart goes in and he can spin it as a growth year. Hell, I think a major reason DJ lasted as long as he did was BECAUSE he kept reminding Mara of Eli.
He absolutely *SHOULD* fire these guys if they can’t make a serious and legitimate playoff push… BUT. Given how much he knows they f@#%d over any chance Jones had of developing with the Coach-Go-Round, I fear he’s still going to be VERY reluctant to punt on them if he sees “signs of development” from Dart. It’s one of the 3 dozen reasons Daboll and Schoen *SHOULD* have been shown the door last year… so the rookie QB gets a fresh coach just like Eli/Coughlin.
I hope I’m wrong, and I hope they do well, and if they don’t, I hope both these clowns get shown the door. But I can easily see a world where Mara says, “Well, the draft was amazing, and you could see Jaxson improving as the season went on, even if the record doesn’t reflect it. But NEXT YEAR, yea, next year you TOTALLY need to make the playoffs, mmmmkaaay?”
Replying here cause I somehow cant on your response to my comment
They say that now but Ill be very surprised if he doesnt declare the instant one of the Manning legacy teams locks down the first overall pick in the draft. My Broncos seem unlikely to be in that race (pretty please god, dont make everything colapse again just as I got some hope things are gona improve after last season ;D) but Id give all 3 of the Saints, Colts and Giants decent chances
PS: I know Mara put out his chest-thumping demand that the team needs to make the playoffs to stick around, but I think we all know that was just showmanship. They can go 0-17 and he’ll still be all, “Look guys, they got a rookie quarterback, and if Eli taught us anything, it’s that you need time, and we don’t want to mess this kid up like we messed up Daniel Jones.”
Anything short of fan rioting over massive incompetence… these guys aren’t going anywhere.
Basically the backlash in 1978 when an effigy was hung after the fumble. It helped led to a league intervention.
Lets hope Dart works out but the guy is pretty much a project pick. Will the Giants Dart forward?
At first I was gonna say “It feels a bit early to fire Mike McDaniel of all coaches”, but I checked and it turns out he’s already going into his fourth season? He gives off enough “young coach” vibes that it doesn’t quite feel like it. It’s also probably because I’m not an AFC East fan and paying a bit less attention.
Also, the fabric wrinkles and folds are drawn weirdly good in this comic, especially in Panel 1. I like it.
Isn’t that weird? It feels like just yesterday he was one of the new “hot young faces” and a legitimate COTY candidate? Hard to point to a specific place where it all went wrong (maybe the Tua concussions?), but maybe that cavalier attitude just doesn’t play as well coming from a Head Coach?
I think Steichen will make it through the season. Barring Richardson turning into Josh Allen or Jones suddenly breaking out of his shackles now that he is no longer in New York, Steichen (and Ballard) will be gone by mid-January. I cannot wait to see how aggressively mediocre the Colts season will be.
Lest Dolphins fans be worried, this is your friendly reminder that it was only a preseason press conference. McDaniel doesn’t want other coaches poaching his regular-season material.
Gotta say, if Tua goes down, we at least have Zack Wilson there to make the whole flameout SO much funnier. Let chaos reign, fuck a championship, I want to have the kind of fun I had in 2019 again.
Who do you think won that Super Bowl at the end of the Ace Ventura movie? It’d be funny if they lost, cucking Marino even in fiction.