Shortly after Mike McDaniel arrived as the head coach of the Dolphins in February of 2022, they were having an offensive staff meeting where the topic of the practice playlist came up.
"I was presenting a problem to the offensive staff, I think, at the time. and the problem was I can't - yeah, I have a lot of fire songs and my music is awesome, but I can't keep up with just the daily grind of keeping guys involved in practice through some music and some juice. On top of that, music is identifying me as old, because there's some stuff that I'm like, what?" McDaniel recently stated.
"I feel like that same old guy that you know that is cursing whatever music you like when you're growing up. So [tight ends coach / assistant head coach] Jon Embree came up with an idea of 'Why don't you have a player everyday kind of decide the playlist?'"
Over the weekend, tight end Julian Hill - a recent orange jersey designee - was asked about the dual pressure that comes with wearing the orange jersey for the day.
On one hand it lets everyone know you're coming off a strong practice, but it is also serves as a bright beacon of who "has the aux" for the day, or in other words - who is in control of the practice music playlist.
"That fit my competitive spirit, or the competitive spirit we're hoping to engender with practice, we thought it was kind of a cool idea to really highlight somebody to the team in a productive way to bring acknowledgement to the day of practice they've have and everything accumulated to that," McDaniel went on to share.
"They love the playlist. They love forcing the will of the listeners, one of the rules about the orange jersey is there's no such thing - you don't complain about the music during practice, because if you don't like the music, change the music. Know what i mean? So if you don't like Liam Eichenberg's playlist, and you can truly show the audience how much better your musical ear is than theirs."
There have been some interesting unintended consequences, like how the orange jersey has become a daily bullseye and sometimes a shot across the bow to guys that line up across from that perso.
"There is pressure, like unintended consequences each time. If I give an orange jersey to a defensive lineman, the offensive line takes it as an offense. If an offensive lineman gets an orange jersey, you better believe people are lining up to go against him in one on ones. That's a competitive spirit that I appreciate and we do a good job protecting the team and protecting each other, so it's something I embrace."
For high school guys, giving control of your practice playlist is going to come with the possible headache of combing it for both language and content that might get you in hot water (and that can be super time consuming), while it might be a tad more doable at the college level, depending on where you are.
Overall though, I love the idea and the environment it has created for McDaniel and his guys that have fully embraced it.
As always, stay tune to The Scoop for the latest.