What Mike McDaniel’s offense means for Justin Herbert, Ladd McConkey, and Omarion Hampton

Before Mike McDaniel was unceremoniously fired following the 2025 regular season by a Dolphins team that will now try to create Green Bay South, he was the architect of the NFL’s most exciting, forward-looking offense.

Maybe you’re not old enough to remember that McDaniel’s 2022 Dolphins offense, before NFL defenses evolved to stop newfangled offenses, posted a top-five EPA per play and a top-eight offensive success rate when Tua Tagovailoa was upright and healthy and under center. Emphasizing speed above all else, McDaniel pushed to acquire Tyreek Hill, turn Tagovailoa into his own version of Jimmy Garoppolo, and make the spreadsheets hum.

Tagovailoa, no one’s idea of an elite signal caller, had the league’s third-highest adjusted EPA per drop back from 2022 to 2024 — before, of course, the bottom fell out for Miami in 2025. Tua over those three seasons was fourth in passing yards per game. Only Brock Purdy averaged more yards per attempt. What McDaniel did with the Dolphins will be forgotten because it never led to much in the postseason. I get that. I also don’t think that’s fair.

When McDaniel last week slid behind a lectern at his Chargers’ introductory presser, looking more like the main character in an Andy Samberg SNL sketch circa 2008, he was quick to say Herbert and the LA offense had not approached their ceiling. I believe him.

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Justin Herbert and Ladd McConkey

What went unsaid during the McDaniel press conference: Greg Roman did nothing to maximize Herbert and his best playmakers. Roman over two seasons as the head of the Bolts offense did nothing to establish an identity, talking a big game about establishing the run before going pass-heavy and sometimes turtling with run-first approaches when it made the least sense.

McDaniel’s approach to offensive scheme and design stands in strong contrast to that of Roman, though first OCs bring a run-first philosophy (Miami usually had a bottom-half pass rate over expected under McDaniel). The Dolphins under McDaniel used motion on around 70 percent of their plays while Roman’s Chargers offense operated at a 50 percent rate. The Dolphins used more play action passing than Roman’s Chargers too. McDaniel’s offense overall made more effort to make the defense look, to keep defenders on their back foot, if only for a moment.

McDaniel’s Dolphins offense used as many crossing and post routes as any in the league before things fell apart in 2025 and the team reverted to a hyper-conservative unit. Crossers, you might remember, were very much featured in Miami’s 70-point destruction of the Sean Payton Broncos in Week 3 of the 2023 season.

Hill, the team’s WR1, was targeted on a league-high 17 crossers in 2023, and the Dolphins ranked first by a wide margin that year in targets, receptions, and receiving yards on crossing routes. In 2024 they ranked fourth in catches on crossers. In 2025 they ranked third.

Crossers weren’t exactly featured in Roman’s offense, even as analytics folks and film grinders alike climbed on their respective roofs and shouted for Roman to let the quick, elusive Ladd McConkey run a few dang crossing routes.

Because here’s the thing: McConkey has been good on crossing routes. In 2024, he ran a grand total of 34 crossers and caught all nine of his targets for 86 yards and two touchdowns. In 2025, McConkey was limited to just 25 crossing routes, catching six of his 11 targets for 71 yards and a score. The Roman playbook just didn’t have McConkey crossers in it, and the LA offense was worse for it. McDaniel, if his utilization of Jaylen Waddle and Tyreek Hill is any indication — and I think it is — will likely have Ladd running crossers all day in 2026. It’s an exciting prospect for a shifty, fast wideout who was top-ten in yards per route run in 2024.

The question naturally arises: Is Justin Herbert any good at these McDaniel-specific passing routes? The short answer is, well, yes. In 2025 Herbert ranked second among 34 qualifying QBs in accuracy on crossing and post patterns. He was 17 percent over his expected completion rate on those throws. It’s noteworthy that those throws were first-read attempts at a fairly low 58 percent clip, meaning these plays were not necessarily designed for Herbert to get it to the pass catchers running crossers and posts. He made the call on his own as a secondary or tertiary option and it worked out quite well, as Herbert’s 10.7 adjusted yards per attempt on those attempts ranked 11th among 34 quarterbacks.

McDaniel during his introductory presser was clear when asked about Herbert’s potential after being trapped for two years in Roman’s uncreative system that did nothing to maximize the skillsets of his best players. “I think he hasn’t neared the ceiling of what he’s capable of,” McDaniel said.