Mike McDaniel will be at one clear disadvantage when he takes his spot on the Miami Dolphins sideline at Hard Rock Stadium on Sunday for his first game as an NFL head coach.
He certainly won’t have the edge in experience with Patriots head coach Bill Belichick standing on the opposite sideline getting set to coach in his 354th regular-season game with New England.
The Grand Canyon-sized gap between the two coaches isn’t lost on McDaniel, who poked fun at it while speaking with reporters on Monday.
“Can there be a larger disparity in career win-loss total?” McDaniel said, as transcribed by NFL Network’s Cameron Wolfe. “It would be a bigger deal if Coach Belichick and I were… doing an Oklahoma drill, but I don’t foresee that happening. I don’t think the fans would really pay for that.”
McDaniel’s assessment at the end, as Wolfe points out, might be a little off since fans would probably get to their seats pretty quickly to see McDaniel and Belichick go head-to-head in the Oklahoma drill.
Belichick will look to use his experience to his advantage and try to notch career victory No. 322, including the playoffs, in the season opener while McDaniel looks to break into the win column. McDaniel spent the previous five seasons as the San Francisco 49ers run game coordinator.
Belichick unsurprisingly usually has his way when facing a rookie coach, and McDaniel understands the challenge that awaits him in going against a Belichick-coached team.
“He’s going to be prepared,” McDaniel said, per The Palm Beach Post’s Hal Habib. “So you know that as a head coach, you better prepare your team and leave no stone unturned. Otherwise, you’ll end up coaching with regret after the fact.”
There’s also a significant age gap between the two head coaches. Belichick is 70 years old and has worked in the NFL since 1975, which is eight years prior to the 39-year-old McDaniel even being born.
Who knows if the wealth of experience Belichick possesses actually will give the Patriots the upper hand over the Dolphins, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to have it.
