Mike McDaniel's job security, Denver's built-in advantage and what sources are saying around the NFL

About a month into this season there was perhaps no seat hotter than the one Mike McDaniel occupied in Miami. But when Dolphins owner Stephen Ross fired GM Chris Grier in October, he let McDaniel know he didn't have to worry about his job for the remainder of the 2025 season.

He may not have to worry about it in 2026, either.

League sources indicate to CBS Sports a belief that McDaniel is likely to return as head coach of the Dolphins next season, this despite the team being eliminated from postseason contention Monday night against the Steelers and as McDaniel benched franchise quarterback Tua Tagovailoa this week. Seventh-round rookie Quinn Ewers will start Sunday vs. the Bengals. 

"They love Mike," said one league source. "They felt like he's had a tough hand and they want to give him a shot."

Multiple prospective head coach and general manager candidates, as well as agents, told CBS Sports they are now operating under the belief the Dolphins will keep McDaniel with three games remaining in the season.

McDaniel, 42, is 34-31 in his nearly four full seasons as Miami's head coach, going to the playoffs in his first two seasons. The Dolphins are 6-8 this year heading into Sunday's match against the Bengals after winning five of the past seven contests.

It's the sort of turnaround Ross had believed he could see with McDaniel leading his team, and it reinforced for decision makers why they didn't cut bait with McDaniel, whom they extended before the start of the 2024 season.

One signal of McDaniel's security came Tuesday when he hinted at the move he ultimately made Wednesday, sending Tagovailoa to the bench for the first time in the quarterback's career. McDaniel got the job -- and his early success -- in large part because of rapport with Tagovailoa. But the subsequent four-year, $212 million contract quickly became an albatross for Miami, and it won't be easy for the team to extricate itself from the deal.

Cutting Tagovailoa this offseason would cost the team nearly $100 million in dead money over two seasons, a financially painful move that would be the largest dead-cap hit in NFL history. Trading him would be difficult, as there's no team that would take on the full freight of his deal. Miami would need to be willing to eat a large portion of his deal, and his trade destinations would be further limited in part because of his well-documented struggles in cold weather.

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That decision will be left to the next Dolphins GM after Grier was fired on Halloween. Champ Kelly has been the interim GM during this turnaround, and he will get the opportunity to interview for the full-time job at the end of the season. Kelly traded Jaelan Phillips to Philadelphia for a third-round pick shortly after getting the interim role, but he did not send receiver Jaylen Waddle to bidders at the trade deadline.

Brandon Shore, the team's SVP of football and business administration, has been more involved since Grier's departure, sources say, which isn't unusual considering his 16 years with the team and five years in this role. The increased role during this interim GM tenure could continue, though.

Sources say the Dolphins may look for a true football evaluator and roster manager at GM with Shore handling the other duties that been added to a GM's plate in today's NFL. That setup is not dissimilar to what had already been in place with Grier, a long-time personnel man, and would be in line with what several other NFL teams do. Perhaps the best and most successful example of such a setup is the L.A. Rams with Les Snead at GM and Tony Pastoors at COO.

There are still three games left to play and final decisions to be made. But as the season comes to a close, the Dolphins appear prepared for their immediate future.

Might the Super Bowl run through Denver?

There is probably nothing more important in the NFL playoffs than getting the first-round bye. Having to play fewer games in the tournament on the way to the Super Bowl is always going to take precedence.

And we know in today's NFL (and other sports leagues for that matter), homefield advantage means less than it used to, say, a decade ago. Everyone has first-class travel. Teams have done all the sleep studies to maximize rest. Ticket prices have gotten so exorbitant that the raucous fans that used to populate the lowest rows of stadiums have been replaced by a wine-and-cheese crowd in field-level suites.

But Denver getting the AFC's No. 1 seed … that means something more.

The Broncos can wrap up the top seed in the AFC before Christmas. If Denver beats Jacksonville, it needs the Patriots to lose, the Chargers to lose (or tie) and the Bills to lose (or tie). That would give the Broncos a 13-2 record where they couldn't be caught in the final two games of the season.

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Denver's altitude has always given the home team an advantage. It takes opponents just a bit to acclimate to the elevation, and we have seen this advantage across decades with the Broncos, Rockies and Nuggets. A lot of very smart people have tried to quantify homefield advantage over the years, and that's always hard to do. But let's look at how the Broncos have fared against the odds.

Since 1970, the Broncos are 17-5 at home in the playoffs. That .773 win percentage is fifth-best in the NFL. But that does not tell the entire story, since the hosting team in the playoffs is always a higher seed, which lends itself to being the "better" team.

Denver is 3-0 at home all-time as the playoff underdog. The rest of the NFL is 30-30 at home in the playoffs as an underdog. The Eagles are the only other team to have won more than two home playoff games as an underdog since 1970.

Oddsmakers have always baked homefield advantage into the spread, of course. Since 1970, home teams in regular season games have covered 49.8 percent of the time. But the Broncos have covered 52.4 percent of the time, the fifth-best percentage in the league.

And when it comes to the playoffs, home teams have covered 52.4 percent of the time. Denver has covered 61.9 percent of the time.

These Broncos will be hard to play in the postseason because of their defense and their fourth-quarter magic. And the fans will be incredible in their first home playoff game in a decade. But it's also just damn harder to play there than elsewhere.

A lump of coal in our stockings?

The NFL could be without three of the big four quarterbacks in the playoffs, with Joe Burrow and Patrick Mahomes out and Lamar Jackson needing to overcome the Steelers to join Josh Allen in the postseason. Plus there will be no Cowboys for the second straight year.

Week 17 could be a big letdown. Already the Christmas slate features a majority of teams who won't make the playoffs, and it may only be the Broncos out of the six who play in the playoffs. The NFC South could be wrapped up that week to make the Week 18 match between Carolina and Tampa Bay useless. If the Steelers lose to the Lions this week and Baltimore beats the Patriots, then Week 17 doesn't matter for either team and they may as well use it as a bye to get ready for their Week 18 tilt. And none of this even takes into account the games between teams well out of playoff contention.

Among other things, this highlights the challenge the league will eventually face when it expands to 18 regular-season games. The more inventory, the more separation between the good and bad. You are destined for more of these low-to-zero leverage games, much like what we see with a 162-game baseball calendar or an 82-game basketball slate. It's something to remember when talk reignites on expanding the NFL regular season.

And speaking of Mahomes ...

Good news, Chiefs fans: the 30-year-old quarterback has every intention of returning to play Week 1 next season. People in the Chiefs building don't doubt he can make his return from ACL and LCL surgery in time for the start of the season. "No one will train harder than him," said a source. His return timeline is right at nine months, so every day is precious for this hope to become reality.

Glenn one-and-done in Gotham? I doubt it

I said it in this space back in October and it remains true today: there is no reason to believe Aaron Glenn will be one-and-done with the Jets. Glenn just fired defensive coordinator Steve Wilks less than a week after he publicly backed his guy, who happened to be his top choice for his inaugural coaching staff. 

Jets owner Woody Johnson has been known to make emotional decisions before, but he has never fired a head coach after just one season. (He also never fired a coach in-season, and then he fired Robert Saleh last year.) Short of a truly historic collapse down the stretch, the Jets will go into 2026 with Glenn as their guy.

Flores in final year of contract, could get HC or top DC gig

An interesting name to watch this coaching cycle is Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores. As the Minnesota Star Tribune first reported and I can confirm, Flores is in the final year of his contract with Minnesota as the Vikings play out the string on a lost season.

Flores has gotten a couple interviews for head-coaching jobs since his lawsuit against the league alleging discrimination, but he hasn't been a finalist anywhere. If six-to-eight head-coaching jobs open, as has been the case the past several years, Flores has the resume to get looks again.

In his three years as DC in Minnesota, the Vikings have ranked 13th in points allowed, then fifth last year and back to 13th this year with an offense that's averaging the fewest plays per drive in the league.

I wrote about his head-coaching candidacy last year, and the dissolution of things in Miami over the past four years could help strengthen his case. Still, even if he is not a head coach this next cycle, one would think he'd be a coach's top candidate for defensive coordinator should he ultimately leave Minnesota.

My weekly uniform/logo thoughts

Count me as a big fan of the Carolina Panthers going old-school this weekend and using the old font in the end zones against Tampa Bay. I think that typeface -- which held from the team's mid-90s beginnings through the 2011 season -- is better than what they transitioned to in 2012, but I get why they needed a change. The typeface, much like a three-button suit, is a little '90s. The slight change in logo never affected me, but it's still cool to see the old Panthers head. But the team isn't putting the NFL shield at midfield like what was there for a quarter century. They'll put the old Panther head in the middle of the field after fans clamored for the logo to replace the shield at the 50 a few years ago. There will also be black rally towels handed out to fans at the game. 

I think Charlotteans will be very pleased with how the field looks Sunday.