The Buffalo Bills will interview former Miami Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel for their vacant head coach job on Friday, per NFL insiders. He will be the fourth of at least seven candidates to meet with the Bills in the process.
Pairing QB Josh Allen with an offensive guru has long been a desire of several sections of Bills Mafia. McDaniel would fit the bill in that regard.
McDaniel cut his teeth under Mike Shanahan in 2005 with the Denver Broncos and has been attached to Mike’s son Kyle almost ever
since. They both joined the Houston Texans staff in 2006 with Gary Kubiak as head coach. When Shanahan joined the Washington football team as offensive coordinator in 2010, McDaniel joined him from 2011 to 2013, then they spent a year together in Cleveland with the Browns before two years in Atlanta on the Falcons staff. In 2017, Shanahan was named the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers and McDaniel followed as run game coordinator before being promoted to offensive coordinator in 2021.
McDaniel became the Miami Dolphins head coach in 2022 and immediately made them a top-5 offense with consecutive playoff appearances. Since then, two straight seasons with a losing record and the inability to unlock Tua Tagovailoa eventually caused him to be fired in Miami.
A Yale graduate, McDaniel is from Aurora, Colorado, which is one of the reasons he was able to hook on with the Broncos back in the day. When he was young, he lost a hat at Broncos training camp and a staffer bought him a replacement. That Broncos staffer became his stepfather, providing a foot in the door.
McDaniel is biracial. His mother is white and his father is black. With the Rooney Rule in place for the NFL hiring process, two minority candidates need to complete in-person interviews for the position. The Bills now have three interviews scheduled with minority candidates.
