Mike McDaniel is evading any criticism for the Miami Dolphins’ current offensive issues

Photo by Justin Casterline/Getty Images

Plus, who’s the least impressive first-year NFL head coach so far this season?

Another weekend of fantastic NFL action has come and gone and because the powers that be insist… we had another doubleheader on Monday night.

But we are through Week 7 and there is a whole lot of where we are that does not match what we thought this season was going to look like. Last week brought us two superstar wide receiver trades and the bigger one (in name) didn’t do anything to impact the weekend’s results.

Unfortunately as we are somewhat deep into the NFL season (it just started?!) injuries are starting to take their toll as well. Needless to say there is a lot of work to do to figure out the current lay of the land.

This is where we come in. Welcome to The Skinny Post where we, Michael Peterson and RJ Ochoa, will hold your hand and walk you through what you need to know.

Mike McDaniel does not seem to be taking enough criticism for how the Dolphins are playing… fair or not?

RJ:

Obviously Mike McDaniel is among the cooler NFL head coaches, which makes him a bit immune to criticism relative to the field. What’s more is that he coaches the Miami Dolphins who, I mean this with no offense, are largely irrelevant unless they are doing something significantly positive.

How do I know this? The Dolphins have been one of the worst offenses in the NFL for most of this season. It goes without saying that the injury to Tua Tagovailoa is hindering them, but history has shown us and we have been repeatedly told that Mike McDaniel is among the game’s elite when it comes to the best and most creative offensive minds.

My point here is not to say that McDaniel is trash, but do you see anybody talking about this to any sort of large degree? I would assume not. It pains me greatly to say this, but consider how hard we are on somebody like Philadelphia Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni. He coaches a highly visible team so it is easier to pick at things when they don’t go the way we think, meanwhile McDaniel is somewhat skating by.

Michael:

I’m right there with you. It’s quite surprising that McDaniel seems to be completely immune to public criticism in regards to their performance this season, regardless of who is starting at quarterback or not.

As you said, McDaniel is viewed as one of the best offensive minds in the NFL right now. That’s in the same area as the Matt LaFleurs, Andy Reids, and Ben Johnsons. But here’s the thing — taking LaFleur as an example — these guys have proven to still get respectable, if not winnable production from their teams even when the injury bug takes a big bite out of the roster.

The Packers were winning games earlier this season with a backup quarterback who barely knew the system and a bunch of late-round draft picks starting at premium positions. The best coaches always get more out of their players. McDaniel does not seem to have that going for him right now.

Let’s take a look at the box scor— WHAT?! Tyreek Hill had just a single catch against the Colts? How does that even happen? If anything, that’s the biggest indictment of McDaniel coming from this game. Both his quarterbacks who played in this matchup have started NFL games before. You should be able to scheme up some simple one-read concepts to get the ball into the hands of your best players. Color me flabbergasted at all of this.

When we’ve seen coach after coach lose their job after a lost season even though they suffered unfathomable injuries to their starting lineup, creating a situation almost no one could succeed in, it’s unusual that no one is even mentioning McDaniel’s name in the coaching hot seat conversation.

How much blame should Aaron Rodgers get for the dysfunction of the Jets?

Michael:

So despite what he had to say to Pat McAfee on his show, I’m not buying that Rodgers had absolutely nothing to do with Robert Saleh’s firing. If there was even ONE individual in that building doing what he was expected to do, it was Saleh and the way he had his defense playing under him.

Let’s take a step back and look at their record a year ago without Rodgers up to this point and their current record now through seven games.

The Jets were 4-3 this time a season ago and are currently 2-5 after dropping the first game in which Rodgers was reunited with his former All-Pro wideout Davante Adams, the latter of which recorded just three receptions for 30 yards in a game where New York scored only 15 points.

On the other side of the ball, the Steelers were able to put up 37 points. Again, the defense was NOT the problem under Saleh. In two games since his firing, the Jets are allowing an average of 30.0 points per game.

Reality is, right now, that the Jets are worse with Rodgers healthy and Saleh fired than they were when each of their respective statuses were reversed. Those are the facts on the face of it.

So again I ask — and keeping with this idea of pointing the finger — should Rodgers be getting more heat for the recent struggles in New York?

RJ:

My answer is basically a different version of this prompt:

Robert Saleh was wrongly made out to be the scapegoat for the current New York Jets’ issues and/or situation.

OF COURSE Aaron Rodgers has had a huge hand in everything going on with the team lately. This doesn’t diminish or defend or mitigate the lack of success that Saleh oversaw, but it does call into question how anyone could succeed with Rodgers calling the shots the way that he seemingly is.

While Rodgers is playing at a decent level, he entered this era of his career under some heavy expectations, many of which were induced by the show he made about arriving to New York in the first place. Beyond the fact that Rodgers is in fact not the greatest quarterback of all time right now (or ever) he has also created a horribly dysfunctional environment that makes everything going on with the franchise difficult and tense.

My hope is that Robert Saleh has spent part of these last weeks off at a pumpkin patch and at the gym and catching up on shows. He is better off.

Who is the least impressive first-year coach in some time and why is it Brian Callahan?

RJ:

We have seen a number of different people become head coaches, many of them for the first time in their careers. Just above this we devoted several hundred words to one of them in Robert Saleh.

I’d offer that the most underwhelming of them in recent memory has been Brian Callahan with the Tennessee Titans. The Titans have a 1-5 record to this point, rank 30th in EPA/Play and are just incredibly boring. I’d offer that the last coach to be this blah in their first year was the one who helped grow Callahan in Zac Taylor with the Cincinnati Bengals.

Typically even if a head coach is not successful they at least have something that makes them or their team stand out. What is that for the Titans? What is unique to Brian Callahan’s version of the team?

It never made sense for Tennessee to move on from Mike Vrabel, but this feels like such a step backwards in so many ways and we didn’t need hindsight to tell us this.

Michael:

I actually agree that Callahan has been such an underwhelming hire so far for the Titans, but I don’t think I can put any other first-year head coach above David Canales right now. The team has a record of 1-6 and while the Titans are just “boring” to watch, the Panthers are legitimately a Replacements-level team (shoutout Keanu Reeves).

Tennessee currently ranks first in total defense right now. Yes, that’s actually true. That’s at least SOMETHING to hang your hat on. But holy smokes, how bad does the offense have to be that the team is still 1-5? Yikes.

But again, back to the Panthers. They rank 31st in total defense, last in points allowed per game by nearly an entire touchdown (6.7 points higher than 31st), and also 28th in both total offense and points per game.

They are the total package if the total package was lost in the mail for a month and when it finally arrived at your doorstep it was beat to hell and smelled funky.

The New York Liberty won their first championship in franchise history this weekend. Which NFL franchise without a Super Bowl victory would you like to see finally earn one?

Michael:

So since the Chargers do not have one to their name that’d be the easy call here for me but for the sake of something different excluding them from my options.

Honestly, I’d have to go with the Vikings here. I’ve lived in Skol country for almost four years now and I just have to say, these fans are some of the best in the country when it comes to loyalty and wholeheartedly loving their teams through all of the ups and downs.

Not to mention that their sports franchises have tons of history and specifically you cannot tell the story of the NFL without mentioning some of the best players to ever wear their colors.

Randy Moss, John Randle, Fran Tarkenton, Adrian Peterson. The list can go on and on.

These fans deserve to have a championship and heck, maybe that’s this year with the way the team is playing thus far.

RJ:

This is a great question and the Vikings are a phenomenal answer for it (the Chargers are not). I’d absolutely love to see Minnesota take home a Super Bowl at long last because they are such a storied franchise with important figures in NFL history as you mentioned.

To that point I have to stick with the actual most deserving and go with the Buffalo Bills. I am far from the first or 500th person to say this, but think about how the Buffalo fans would react? It would be incredible.

Some franchises and their fans deserve titles but some deserve them and I would put the Bills into that latter category. It is well-documented how they went to four Super Bowls in a row in the 1990s and then right as the players involved in that run of sorts all retired… the Tom Brady era with the New England Patriots unveiled itself.

Give me the Bills. Easy.