When quarterback Tua Tagovailoa returns to NFL action on Sunday night for the first time since Sept. 29, the voice in his helmet calling the plays for the Miami Dolphins’ offense will be head coach Mike McDaniel.

McDaniel will be running an NFL team in a regular-season game for the seventh time after 17 years as an assistant coach, most recently the offensive coordinator for the San Francisco 49ers.

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When McDaniel came aboard in Miami, Tagovailoa thought the 39-year-old wasn’t like the coaches he was used to – his father, Nick Saban at Alabama and Brian Flores with the Dolphins.

During an interview with NBC Sports, which will televise Miami’s Sunday night game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, Tagovailoa said McDaniel had stayed true to that first impression.

“I’m used to someone really getting down on me because that’s kind of the way my dad coached me was what he would call tough love,” Tagovailoa said. “I had that with coach Saban. We had that with Flo last year. So my perception of what a head coach should be was always, you know, hard, tough – like you got to really work hard in order to find success.

“But it’s pretty cool that there’s other ways you can find success, and it’s not always getting down on somebody. This guy’s philosophy, I think, with how he coaches is everyone wants to do good. There’s not one guy in the locker room or in this team meeting that is trying to do something bad, so that when they do make a mistake, it’s not a callout, but it’s really just a learning point for everyone to listen that ‘Hey, this guy didn’t mean to do that, but if you don’t do the things that we work on in practice and that happens, this is the result of that.’

“And I think that’s super-cool that we see that and it’s not a beatdown of plays that you’ve done wrong and it doesn’t kill the confidence of guys. It’s really like, ‘Oh, that does make sense as to why he’s saying that. Let me do it this upcoming practice and see that it really works.’”

Tagovailoa has not played since sustaining a concussion in the first half of the Dolphins’ 27-15 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals on Sept. 29.

Miami entered that game with a 3-0 record, but without Tagovailoa, the Dolphins lost to the New York Jets 40-17 on Oct. 9 and to the Minnesota Vikings 24-16 on Oct. 16 to drop to 3-3.

The Steelers and Dolphins meet at 7:20 p.m. CDT Sunday at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida.

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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.