49ers’ assistant Mike McDaniel named Dolphins’ new head coach

Kyle Shanahan is losing a trusted wingman to the Miami Dolphins.

Mike McDaniel. an assistant coach who has been associated with Shanahan-run offenses with the 49ers, Atlanta, Washington and Houston, will take over for Brian Flores as head coach in Miami, the Dolphins announced Sunday afternoon.

The 49ers either realized it was a good possibility or knew it was going to happen, as evidenced by the pre-emptive strike of hiring Anthony Lynn to the offensive staff on Friday. McDaniel was Shanahan’s eyes and ears in the booth on game days and his specialty was coordinating the running game. Lynn is expected to assume those duties with McDaniel’s departure.

McDaniel, 38, got his first job as an intern in 2005 with the Denver Broncos under Mike Shanahan, Kyle’s father. He joined the Houston Texans in 2006 on coach Gary Kubiak’s staff, where Kyle Shanahan was the offensive coordinator. In 2011, McDaniel was on the Washington staff with Mike Shanahan as head coach and Kyle Shanahan as offensive coordinator. When Kyle became offensive coordinator for the Atlanta Falcons in 2015, McDaniel joined the staff as wide receivers coach.

In hiring McDaniel, Miami becomes the first team in this coaching cycle to select a minority candidate. McDaniel is biracial; his father is Black. The 49ers are in line for a compensatory third-round draft pick after the NFL voted in 2020 to award a pick to teams that lost a minority candidate to a head coach or general manager position.

Flores, fired after two seasons despite the Dolphins finishing the season in 2021 with a seven-game win streak, recently filed a class-action suit against the NFL and its team alleging sham interviews and other instances of systemic racism.

Regarding McDaniel’s candidacy for a head coaching position, Shanahan said at the end of the season, “Mike’s always been good at what he does. He always will be and he deserves to get some of these opportunities people are talking about.”

Assuming Lynn takes over run-game duties and Bobby Slowik continues as the passing game coordinator, McDaniel gave a glimpse of his job in a press conference following the regular season.

“He expects good information from me. He expects that if I tell him something that it is the most informed information that I could possibly have,” McDaniel said. “But, he also knows, and this is something that he’s very candid about that, ‘Hey, whatever your suggestion is, ultimately, I’m saying the play to the quarterback and I’m responsible for the outcome.’ ”

When McDaniel was being mentioned for head coaching jobs in late January, quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo talked about the role the offensive coordinator had in Shanahan’s offense.

“Mike is awesome, man. He really is. He’s kind of that, I don’t want to say the mastermind behind everything, but he’s kind of that guy in the background that doesn’t say a whole ton to a lot of people, but his mind is always moving,” Garoppolo said. “The ideas that he comes up with are so fresh and new that it’s a cool guy to have on the staff. Just the way that he can implement things. And he simplifies it down to, I mean he’s a lot smarter than most of us. So he dumbs it down for us and kind of gets us all on the same page.”