Adam Gase’s voice was pretty gravelly Monday afternoon after an all-night flight from California.

Or was that the growl of a young head coach who is in the midst of his first real feeding frenzy, who still hasn’t come back to normal after Sunday’s 14-10 escape at Los Angeles and never wants life with the 6-4 Miami Dolphins to come back to normal again?

"That was either gonna be a pick or a touchdown," Gase said when asked about Miami’s final drive and any consideration he might have given to the more reliable option of kicking a field goal to tie the game. "That game wasn’t going to overtime. That’s how it was going to be."

When did he adopt that attitude? Was it when the Dolphins got the ball back on a Rams punt with 2:11 to play, trailing 10-7? A potential winning touchdown was still 75 yards away at that point.

Gase didn’t specify, but it was pretty clear what he was thinking a few big plays later, as Miami rocketed to the Los Angeles 35-yard line. Rustling through his play sheet like a teenager on a video-game rush, Gase kept pushing Ryan Tannehill to take chances, to think of grabbing a victory rather that postponing a defeat.

This is what the Dolphins lacked in Joe Philbin, the coach who got queasy in such situations, or Tony Sparano, who flashed some of his heartiest fist-pumps for strategically-important field goals.

Gase is nothing like that. He’s 38, the freshest coach in the NFL by chronology and by chemistry. Right after Tannehill hit DeVante Parker for the winning score with 36 seconds remaining, the TV cameras even caught Gase briefly with his cap on backwards, whooping it up with Miami players on the sideline.

A five-game win streak is the headline that hangs over all of this. Even more exciting is the new horizon, with the 1-9 San Francisco 49ers coming to Hard Rock Stadium on Sunday and a legitimate chance at a winning season if the Dolphins can only split their final six games.

A continuation of the attitude change within this franchise is the key, driving everyone to always think green light rather than caution or stop. That’s what the Miami defense did on Sunday while the offense was going absolutely nowhere for three-plus quarters.

There were 10 Matt Darr punts, remember, prior to the Dolphins’ two desperate touchdown drives, and a raging 0-for-10 flameout on third down.

We haven’t even talked about the Miami offensive line. There are no answers yet on the availability of Mike Pouncey, Branden Albert and Laremy Tunsil for the San Francisco game. Chris Foerster, the coach in charge of that room, will keep punching with whoever he’s got, and one strategy might be to keep showing on a continual loop the Jarvis Landry touchdown in which Ju’Wuan James started pushing the pile and every other lineman joined in until the whole tangle of bodies fell in an exhausted heap across the goal line.

"They did a great job," Gase said of Anthony Steen, Kraig Urbick and Sam Young, who filled in for the missing starters alongside James and Jermon Bushrod. "They finished the play.

"The way I look at O-line play, you got five guys out there that are just going to do everything in their physical power to not let the quarterback get hit. That’s all you can ask for. It’s a mismatch, no matter who’s out there. D-line vs. O-line nowadays, it’s a mismatch, especially when they know you’re going to throw it."

While we’re on the topic of mismatches, how about the conventional coaching approach of Jeff Fisher in the fourth quarter against Gase’s growl?

The Rams were up 10-0 with 6:45 to play when the Rams’ coach was faced with a fourth-and-1 decision. He decided to take a poke at a 48-yard field goal rather than trying to put the game away once and for all with a touchdown at the end of a long, time-consuming drive. He did, in other words, what Philbin would have done.

Well, the kick missed and that turned the game over to Tannehill and Gase, who did not miss.

"What your experiences are and what my experiences have been are two completely different things," Gase said in reference to the media’s long criticism of Tannehill’s late-game leadership. "I guess when we get in the fourth quarter and it’s a close game, I feel confident.

"Between him being able to play in the fourth quarter and throwing the deep balls, I’m kind of questioning your guys’ evaluation skills right now."

There’s that growl again, barely hidden behind a winning grin.