Tua Tagovailoa seems like a good guy. He likes MacGruber, he bought golf simulators for his quarterback room, and he doesn’t like it when you call him fat. He seems like a normal guy that you’d want to hang out with.
That’s why it’s sad to see that the Miami Dolphins broke him.
We're less than two weeks out from a new season, and Tua has succumbed to the hell that is playing behind his offensive line. This may go down as one of the more socially prominent examples of Stockholm Syndrome.
Tua Tagovailo has given up hope on having a competent offensive line
Tua met with the Miami media on Aug. 26 and was asked about his confidence in the Dolphins’ much-maligned offensive line.
“Well Brotha, I get the ball out fast," Tagovailoa said. "So I’m confident with anybody we got up there. I’ll tell you that. I’m confident with anybody we get out there.”
To his point, he’s incredibly correct about the first point; Tua throws the ball very quickly. Per Next Gen Stats, in the four seasons he’s played in the NFL, his average time to throw is 2.5 seconds. In 2020 it was 2.55, in 2021 2.52, in 2022 2.6, and 2023 2.36. Those low numbers are paramount to his game because his offensive lines have been garbage.
He’s been sacked 90 times in his career. That’s not a huge number but you have to remember that he’s only played one full season, and one of those seasons (2022) was cut short purely due to concussions he sustained from getting sacked. After that season he came out and said he considered retirement “for a time.” It’s been bad.
The point is, that Tua was in a bad situation, but his playstyle works to make the most out of his bad protection and he knows it. Unfortunately, it seems like the consistency of that bad protection has also shifted his mentals.
Saying, “I’m confident with anybody we got up there,” is not a glowing endorsement and it’s even more sketchy when he repeats it. It’s kind of a known fact that if someone keeps saying that they’re confident, it pretty much always means that they’re not confident, like, even a little bit.
In all fairness, what else is he supposed to say? He can’t answer that question with, ‘You know…I’ve always been good at hot potato and now I get paid to play it professionally because it stops my brain from turning into baba ganoush. It’d be sick if the team took some of the money they gave me and grabbed someone with even half the talent of Terron Armstead, but it’s whatever.’
It sounds like Tua’s just surrendered to the fact that he’s going to have offensive lines that the big bad wolf could blow through. Even if you’re not a fan of the fins, Tua’s a pretty easy guy to root for, so it’s a bummer to see that he’s broken down and accepted that he’s just one of the first two little pigs.