Mike McDaniel and Kyle Shanahan worked closely together for 14 years.
Sometimes too close.
McDaniel, hired during the offseason to coach the Miami Dolphins, told Miami reporters in September one of the big differences in being a head coach as opposed to an assistant is a key bit of personal hygiene.
“I used to be able to push it from game day to almost Wednesday without showering,” McDaniel said. “Now, that would be obvious. I can’t hide.”
When word made its way to Shanahan via KNBR, the 49ers coach said “He’s definitely not lying.”
McDaniel, 39, has stepped out of Shanahan’s shadow with a Dolphins team that is smelling like roses as one of the NFL’s biggest success stories at 8-3. The two coaches will be on opposite sidelines for the first time when Miami visits the 49ers Sunday at Levi’s Stadium.
Elevated from running game coordinator to offensive coordinator under Shanahan in 2021, McDaniel’s weekly press briefings were equal parts football and deadpan humor. He’s slight of build and has a quirky nature. A Yale graduate, McDaniel is highly intelligent without flaunting it, doesn’t take himself too seriously and is about as far from the stereotypical hardcore football coach as possible.
Although McDaniel had worked for a year with Shanahan’s father Mike during a coaching internship with the Denver Broncos in 2005, it wasn’t until the following year the two got to know one another on the staff of the Houston Texans under coach Gary Kubiak.
Shanahan coached wide receivers, McDaniel was a quality control assistant. Shanahan noticed immediately McDaniel’s recall and organization skills were remarkable.
“He was someone I could always carry the conversation with what’s going on in the receiver room, how I saw football,” Shanahan said.
After a quick detour to the XFL with the Sacramento Mountain Lions/California Redwoods, McDaniel rejoined Shanahan in Washington on Mike Shanahan’s staff.
Chris Foerster, the 49ers current running game coordinator, coached the offensive line with Washington and remembers McDaniel as coming in every Monday with a handful of new ideas and then bounding back and forth between his office and that of Kyle Shanahan.
Foerster was one of the groomsmen at McDaniels’ wedding.
“Mike was like a ping pong ball between me and Kyle,” Foerster said. “That’s what Mike’s role was for us and he was able to work between the two of us and he learned in the process.”
Wherever Shanahan went, McDaniel followed. To the Cleveland Browns in 2014 and the Atlanta Falcons in 2015 with Shanahan as offensive coordinator.
If Shanahan wanted to refer to something he’d said a year earlier, McDaniel knew immediately.
So when Shanahan was named coach of the 49ers in 2017, one of his first staff hires was McDaniel.
“I’m hard to get rid of,” McDaniel told reporters Wednesday. “I recognized in him early that he could really help players grow and live out their dreams. He knew more than anybody that I’d been around about football so you try to be a resource and try not to miss opportunities — especially ones right in your face.
“Maybe he felt bad for me or maybe he recognized that I was listening. Either way, it was a great working relationship that I’m very much grateful, indebted and really don’t know where I’d be without it.”
As the offensive coordinator last season, McDaniel had regular meetings with local writers for the first time. It’s an important step for anyone aspiring to be a head coach. Shanahan admitted he was curious how it was going to go, given McDaniel’s penchant for alternating serious football talk with humor and off-the-wall observations.
“I never knew how he would do in those press conferences or how he’d come off,” Shanahan said. “That’s how he is all the time to us. Even a little bit worse, probably. And it’s an acquired taste sometimes or it throws people off a little bit. But I thought he put it together real good and did it in a funny way and is always entertaining.”
McDaniel, who inherited a solid defense from a 9-8 team after the controversial firing of predecessor Brian Flores, bonded quickly with quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. He’s installed a system designed to get speedsters Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle into space. Tagovailoa has gone from being regarded as a potential bust to a potential MVP candidate.
“I remember turning (the television) on in the preseason and watching his first game and I was like, ‘Wow, this guy looks totally different and looks very comfortable,’ ” Shanahan said.
Tagovaiola told reporters he had to adjust from hard coaching to McDaniel’s positive and keep-it-loose touch. During last week’s 30-15 win over the Houston Texans, McDaniel over his headset told the Alabama product “Georgia is the best SEC school. Without a shadow of a doubt.”
Quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo credited McDaniel with devising some of the concepts that helped the 49ers pull out of a 3-5 start last season and end up in the NFC Championship game.
“The ideas he comes up with are fresh and new,” Garoppolo said last January. “He’s a cool guy to have on staff. He’s a lot smarter than most of us. He dumbs it down for us and gets us on the same page.”
Mike McGlinchey, the 49ers’ right tackle, said McDaniel was instrumental in patiently walking him through the steps of a blocking scheme and how enthusiastic he would be when he saw progress.
“He loves little things that you don’t even pick up on where he’s like, ‘Dude, that’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen’ and it’s just a reach block that I’ve been working on for a long time,” McGlinchey said. “He’s a savant in football.”
McDaniel is 5-foot-9 and 180 pounds but looks smaller and has said he tends to lose weight during the season for the same reason he doesn’t shower regularly. Too busy. He’s not an imposing figure nor does he conduct business in an authoritarian manner.
“You’re used to a certain machismo I guess when you’re sitting in a football office, especially at the NFL level,” former 49ers left tackle Joe Staley told KNBR. “But I think more than anything, players respect guys that work, whether it’s players or coaching staff. Guys that put the time in.”
McDaniel promised at the outset of the week “not to make it about me” and politely declined through a team spokesman to speak with media who cover the 49ers. He elaborated on his feelings Wednesday with the Miami press.
“I have had life before this year for sure,” McDaniel said. “But wow, I think it’s incredibly insulting to so many if I’m worried about, ‘This is where I used to stand.’ People are depending on me not to lean or think that way.”
