McDaniel’s NFL work ethic began with Broncos
INDIANAPOLIS — By now, many have heard the story of how, as a youth, Mike McDaniel lost a Charlotte Hornets hat as he watched practice at Denver Broncos training camp, and how that led Broncos video coordinator Gary McCune, finding him upset over it, to buy him a new one. And how McCune went on to meet McDaniel’s single mother, Donna, and eventually marry her, becoming Mike McDaniel’s stepfather.
This same story is what initially allowed McDaniel, the Greeley, Colorado native and Broncos fan growing up, to get his foot in the door with an NFL team for the first time.
No, not his unpaid internship in 2005 out of college at Yale. His tenure as a ball boy for the Broncos in high school that was facilitated by McCune.
There, beginning with Denver’s first Super Bowl-winning team in 1997 when McDaniel was 14, can be found the earliest roots of him exhibiting the extraordinary work ethic that ultimately led him to skyrocket through assistant coaching ranks and become Dolphins head coach this offseason.
“Because I was a fan, first and foremost, I would outwork the piss out of all the coaches’ sons,” McDaniel told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in a conversation at the NFL scouting combine last week. “I would be the head spotter. I’d run everywhere. I’d be the first one in, last one out. Just because it was such a big deal to me. And coach’s kids had just moved, they identify their dad as a coach being around football their whole life. So, it’s just not as big a deal [to them].
“That work ethic was noticeable to Mike Shanahan.” So much so that Shanahan remembered it when McDaniel came back to him as he transitioned to life after graduation at Yale — initially, not even looking for a position with the Broncos before his also-now-well-known résumé submission.
“Fast-forward to me being in college as a senior and trying to figure out what I’m going to do with the rest of my life, feeling the weight of like, ‘Hey, you have a Yale degree; figure it out,’ ” McDaniel recalled. “One of the thoughts I had was maybe I can reach out to Mike Shanahan, get a letter of recommendation from him, so I can get a GA job, and I could put it in a Broncos envelope so people would actually open it.
“He said, his famous words were, ‘I’ll do you one step further, and I’ll let you be a training camp intern,’ which was made up. It was just like, ‘Hey, you can come learn what we do and be around,’ which is a huge bone.”
At the time, in 2005, the Broncos had a small coaching staff with one non-position coach assistant, Troy Calhoun, who is now head coach at Air Force.
McDaniel’s hustle led him to try to identify extra avenues through which he could contribute so there was no way the Broncos would let him go after training camp.
He found there was an advancement in technology that coaches who had been around the game were slow to pick up on, things such as overlays with a play call on a screen along with practice footage, which is standard now but was in its advent then.
“There were things like that that I thought, ‘The more that I can do that no one else wants to do. I’m living at home, which is like 20 minutes from the facility. I can work for free. If I can just do that all training camp, then when the season comes, they won’t want to let me go because no one will want to do it,’ ” McDaniel said of his mindset. “So, I found everything that I could find that was super annoying and tedious and strategically did that, and sure enough, when the season came around, Gary Kubiak and Mike Shanahan got together and said, ‘Let’s keep him for the year.’ ”
The Broncos reached the AFC Championship Game that season, falling to eventual Super Bowl-champion Pittsburgh Steelers.
The run led Kubiak to get the head coaching job with the Houston Texans, and Kubiak brought McDaniel and Calhoun along with him for McDaniel to land his first paid job in the NFL.