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Darren Rizzi Should be the Next Dolphins Head Coach

Originally posted on Dolphins Talk | By Mike Oliva | Last updated Oct 8, 2025 10:02 AM ET

Darren Rizzi Should be the Next Dolphins Head Coach

Don’t laugh at the title, I’m dead serious.

And this isn’t someone waxing poetic about the glory days when Rizzi was a great special teams coordinator for the Miami Dolphins.

Mike McDaniel will be fired soon, or after the season, it doesn’t matter at this point. He is a dead man walking.

And the Dolphins, with their new general manager, will conduct a head coaching search in a few months.

And we are aware of all the names that will be considered.

From Mike McCarthy, to Jeff Hafley, Kliff Kingsbury, and Joe Brady, to name a few.

They will all be labeled as the “hot candidates” and get all of the attention.

There is one name out there who has interviewed for multiple NFL head coaching jobs in the past, including with the Miami Dolphins, that is often overlooked.

And he may be the perfect fit for the Miami Dolphins in 2026.

Darren Rizzi.

Everyone in league circles respects him.

He is the most respected special-teams coordinator the NFL has seen since Mike Westhoff.

He has previous head coaching experience at New Haven and the University of Rhode Island. Granted, not exactly Notre Dame and Alabama, but he has been in the role of head coach before, which counts for something.

Additionally, he served as the Saints’ interim head coach in 2024 for eight games.

Then consider that he coached under Sean Payton with the Saints and now this year with the Denver Broncos, and he knows how a well-run, professional NFL staff is supposed to operate.

After the 2018 season, the Dolphins interviewed Rizzi to be their head coach, but Chris Grier went with his long-time friend Brian Flores instead.

Clearly a mistake in hindsight.

And honestly, the only way this works with Rizzi is if Grier has to be gone from the building.

Can’t be the GM.

Can’t be a Senior Advisor and have some fugazi title in the front office.

Take his badge, and he has to be gone because Rizzi won’t be part of an organization where the guy who didn’t hire him is still in a position of power.

LEADER OF MEN

I know when looking for a head coach, most teams look for someone who has been an NFL head coach, a college head coach at a major program, or an offensive or defensive coordinator.

Rarely does anyone look at the Special Teams coordinator.

Well, that way of thinking is probably wrong, and Darren Rizzi is a leader of men.

Because he is so well respected, I am confident he will be able to assemble a top-notch staff of the best assistant coaches.

At only 55 years old, he is in that sweet spot of not too old, but not too young to have a job like this.

And Rizzi has seen it all, from the bad times with the Dolphins to the success with the Saints and now the Broncos.

Nothing will throw him; nothing will be a curveball for him; he will handle it like a professional football coach.

Hell, in Miami, he was so well thought of that he was the guy who carried around the “red flag” as the Special Teams coordinator and would hand it to the head coach to throw when it was time to challenge a call.

With the ever-changing landscape of special team rules, Rizzi is the loudest voice rewriting and tweaking those rules every year.