Miami Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel is making sure that his players do not get down on themselves following their disappointing Week 18 loss to the Buffalo Bills, which cost them the AFC East division title.
HBO’s Hard Knocks caught McDaniel addressing a room full of dejected looking Dolphins players, trying to spin the loss into a positive.
“Yesterday was hard as (expletive) to deal with, and in times like this, it either makes or breaks you,” McDaniel said, via Brenna White of NFL.com. “And I want to rip the band-aid off because here’s what you got to know. Our intent is to be great. Well, inherent in that (expletive) is difficulty. Like you literally have to have difficult (expletive) to be great.”
Miami was 9-3 heading into Week 14 and sat three games ahead of the Bills for first place in the AFC East at the time. It was looking like the team was going to cruise to a division crown.
“The reason why we’re frustrated is because we have high expectations that we’ve created,” McDaniel continued. “We created that (expletive). No one said, ‘Oh, the Dolphins are X, Y and Z.’ No, they did not actually, so our mindset collectively has no time for anything else, but getting to the point where we’re best equipped to do that (expletive) and we’re doing it as a team. We are in this together, earning it.”
The Dolphins went just 2-3 over their final five games, including a 56-19 blowout loss to the Baltimore Ravens in Week 17. Meanwhile, Buffalo reeled off five consecutive wins.
Miami has faced a lot of criticism this season for its inability to beat good teams, as it went just 1-5 against squads with winning records. That included a pair of losses to the Bills.
The Dolphins would have secured the No. 2 overall seed in the AFC had they beaten Buffalo this past Sunday, but instead, they fell to sixth in the conference and will now have to go on the road to battle the Kansas City Chiefs in the Wild Card Round of the playoffs.
We’ll see if Mike McDaniel can deliver Miami’s first postseason win since January 2001.
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