We don’t have many personalities like Mike McDaniel in the current NFL. Every week, the Miami Dolphins head coach seemingly gives us a delightful soundbite as he directs traffic for South Beach professional football.
With the Dolphins being the subject of this year’s in-season Hard Knocks on HBO, that means we potentially get even more entertainment from McDaniel. In the show’s latest episode, McDaniel didn’t disappoint.
It features the Miami head coach talking with the New York Jets’ Robert Saleh before their Black Friday game last weekend. McDaniel tells Saleh that he took a wild accidental hit from Las Vegas Raiders tight end Michael Mayer, who was pushed out of bounds. He explained that it took everything in his power to pretend it didn’t “hurt like a [expletive]” despite taking hits to the shoulder, his leg, and his groin.
In this regard, McDaniel is a much better man than me because I wouldn’t have been able to hide it.
Mike McDaniel took that hit like a champ. 😅
Watch #HardKnocks with the @MiamiDolphins on @StreamOnMax pic.twitter.com/60dVosn35e
— NFL (@NFL) November 29, 2023
I can’t imagine that experience would be much different for any of the rest of us. NFL players are not built like typical human beings. Add on roughly 20 pounds of additional padding and a helmet and it’d probably really hurt to take a hit from a pro.
Kudos to McDaniel for pushing through it, even though he didn’t really have to. You don’t get extra points for pretending you’re not hurt, pal!