Greg Cote: Dolphins' OT luck wins in Madrid and saves McDaniel from himself

You got lucky, Mike McDaniel. Your team saved you from yourself. You somehow got to be the winning coach in Madrid, Spain on Sunday despite yourself.

The Miami Dolphins beat the Washington Commanders in a duel of 3-7 teams because cornerback Jack Jones intercepted Marcus Mariota’s first pass in overtime to set the Fins up at the Commanders’ 33. Three De’Von Achane runs later, Riley Patterson’s chip-shot 29-yard field goal wrapped a gift-of-a-victory.

“Defense got a big stop and all we had to do was close it out,” Achane said.

Said Jones: “The tight end [Zach Ertz] tried to sneak across the formation, and I just went for the steal.”

The ending of this game should have earned a sigh of relief from McDaniel loud enough to be heard 4,400 miles away in Miami.

It was McDaniel’s lame-brained decision late in regulation that could have and probably should have cost the Fins this game.

Tied 13-13 and Miami with fourth down at the Washington 2-yard-line, McDaniel might have called for a short gimmie field goal for a 16-13 lead with less than two minutes left in regulation and the Commanders with no timeouts. Instead the Dolphins went for it and failed, with Ollie Gordon plowing right up the middle and losing a yard.

It was a thoroughly dumbfounding decision for McDaniel to embrace that unnecessary bravado and needless risk instead of taking the easy, likely winning points in a game where points were so tough to come by.

“I like the aggressive mentality,” said defensive end Bradley Chubb afterward. “Mike believed in us.”

It’s what you say after a win. Had Miami lost, the second-guessing of McDaniel’s oddball decision would have been intense. When you lose games with calls like that, well, coaches get fired for stuff like that.

McDaniel began his postgame news conference with “Hola,” and compliments for the host city.

“You wanna talk about some good bread,” he said. “Everywhere I’d go [in Madrid] there was awesome bread.”

A question got around to the awful decision that Miami somehow survived.

“I definitely thought you don’t make that decision unless I thought the play was gonna work.,” he said. “And it didn’t. But a field goal gives them the ball back. You try to do the best things with the recourse of failure. I definitely wouldn’t have made that call if I thought it was gonna fail.”

No rationalizing it. It was dumb luck, in the form of Jones’ picking off Mariota’s awful pass, that sent Miami on a happy flight home with its first two-game win streak of the season on the heel of last week’s stunning home upset of the rival Buffalo Bills.

At 4-7 now, in the wake of parting ways with general manager Chris Grier, the Dolphins are off this coming week, then host New Orleans and play at the New York Jets. Miami getting to 6-7 is not preposterous, or even unlikely. A late climb to wild-card playoff contention — once a ludicrous pipe-dream this season — is now within view, if still very distant.

The Dolphins “home game” across the world made history as the first ever NFL game played in Spain.

The game was played at Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, home field of legendary soccer club Real Madrid, so it seemed fitting that all of the scoring in a 6-6 first half was via the feet as Miami cashed 46- and 39-yard field goals and Washington countered with 3’s from 26 yards and 51.

Miami led 3-0 and again 6-3 but stalled in the red zone both times, while defense allowed the Commanders to take over possession and the clock, running 32 plays in the half to Miami’s 17.

The game started like a dream for Miami, with Achane’s 11-yard run, a 14-yard pass to Jaylen Waddle and then Achane’s 23-yard scoot on the first three snaps. Of course the Dolphins Dolphin’d to end that series, lining up to go for it on fourth-and-1, taking a delay-of-game penalty and settling for the consolation kick.

The rest of the game was a back-and-forth struggle that may or may not have been received as highly entertaining by local fans.

The teams traded second-half TDs before the wild finish that let to a quick resolution in OT.

Miami is 2-5 all-time now in international games since playing in the first ever in 2007 vs, the New York Giants in London. I was there. It was fun, a novelty. Nobody knew then it would become the NFL’s obsession to grow its brand abroad — or that the Dolphins would aggressively be at the forefront in a desire to be “the” team of the Spanish-speaking world.

The Fins should have won this one. The Commanders entered on a five-game losing streak with a backup QB and a discombobulated defense. Needing overtime proved no team may be taken lightly by Miami (including the upcoming Saints and Jets).

I wish the Dolphins’ global takeover blueprint to be South America’s team would be on the back burner in favor of more pressing concerns. Maybe concentrate on a takeover of the NFL, or at least the AFC East? A franchise that hasn’t won a playoff game since 2000 has bigger concerns at home than wooing fans in Spain, Brazil and Argentina.

This one pointed a bad season upward, at least, with Miami’s third win in the past four games. Tua Tagovailoa played efficiently and turnover-free.

And the team’s mini-turnaround has given McDaniel a fighting chance to keep his job beyond his season, even as the head coach needed some lucky breaks to save himself from himself on a Sunday in Spain.

____