What Mike McDaniel said about his job status after Dolphins' finale

A year ago, Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross wasted no time letting fans know that Mike McDaniel and Chris Grier would return as head coach and general manager, respectively. Less than two hours after their Week 18 game ended, Ross released a statement telling fans that both would be retained.

This time around, no such statement assuring McDaniel's safety came Sunday night after a 38-10 loss to the New England Patriots.

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The decision whether or not McDaniel is brought back may be on hold while the Dolphins hunt for a new executive to replace Grier as general manager. But after the blowout finale, McDaniel didn't sound like a coach expecting to get a pink slip soon.

"I'm operating the same exact way that I always have, which is no one's entitled to anything," McDaniel told reporters. "I take the job serious and so I will aggressively attack the job tomorrow and like every day that I have the job. I think it's supremely important to not minimize your responsibility and what people need from you. ... I'm going to keep my conversations with ownership between myself and ownership."

While McDaniel kept the content of his conversations with Ross to himself, the coach focused much of his press conference on his upcoming work in the offseason.

When asked about the Dolphins' consistent second half issues, particularly in the third quarter, he said solving that issue will be one of his top priorities.

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"I have a strong motivation to take the offseason to kind of figure out what we can do from a controllable standpoint, from a schematic standpoint, how we operate because that's -- the game's won in the second half. When things don't fall in your favor, you have to be able to adjust," McDaniel said.

"You have to win games where things aren't ideal in the third quarter, so we got to figure that out. That will be led by me, for sure."

It's very possible that the Dolphins' general manager candidates will advocate for a full reset without McDaniel at the helm and that could eventually result in the team moving in a different direction at head coach. But for now, it seems McDaniel is planning to prep for his fifth season as head coach.

This article originally appeared on Dolphins Wire: Mike McDaniel job status: What Dolphins coach said after Week 18 loss