‘No chance!’ Why a 12-year pro says Dolphins shouldn’t play Tua before Thanksgiving
The Miami Dolphins remain noncommittal about their plans this season for Tua Tagovailoa, but haven’t ruled out him playing significant snaps in 2020.
If they do, they’d be making a big mistake — according to ESPN analyst Dan Orlovsky, who spent more than a decade as an NFL quarterback.
“There’s no reason, no justifiable reason, to put Tua on the field in September, October or early November,” Orlovsky said during a national conference call Wednesday. “You’re not going to make a playoff run with Tua. You’re an improved football team. Your head coach and your general are fighting for their jobs.
“The young man is 160 or 180 days removed from questions being tied to, ‘Will he ever walk again?’ There’s no preseason football. Can we allow him get comfortable moving in his body first in an NFL environment of practice. The worry of, ‘Can my hip really hold up? Can we get him a full year of rehab of getting his body completely strong to withstand those beatings? For that reason, if I was Grier or Flores, I would have already come out and said there’s no chance that Tua is going to start any of our first 12 games. No chance.”
Flores has not heeded that advice. While the Dolphins’ second-year coach is determined to lower the volume surrounding his new star quarterback, he has not ruled him out from even starting the opener — at least publicly. Most expect Ryan Fitzpatrick to be Miami’s Week 1 starter, but if Fitzpatrick struggles and Tagovailoa excels in practice, it’s not inconceivable that the Dolphins make a quarterback change early in the season.
Orlovsky, who is part of ESPN’s new-look “NFL Live” lineup along with Marcus Spears and others, has long argued that the Dolphins should redshirt Tagovailoa — which isn’t a popular take among Dolphins fans, and even some of his peers. All believe caution is in order given Tagovailoa’s many surgeries — including last November’s to fix a major hip injury — but few have gone as far as Orlovsky has in essentially advocating for Tua to go in bubble wrap this season.
“Realistic expectations for Tua should be very low,” he said Wednesday.
The preseason schedule — or more accurately, lack thereof — is one of many factors working against Tagovailoa. Wednesday was his first full-team practice as a pro. COVID-19 has been a major disruption to the NFL offseason, and Orlovsky and Spears expect play to be rough for the first few weeks of the NFL season.
And yet ...
“[The NFL is] going to be intent on finishing the season,” said Spears, a former Cowboys defensive end. “... You can have all the prep and planning you want to have, but COVID is going to reach the NFL. Players are going to come down with COVID. The NFL I think is going to present the information to us publicly that they’re going to move forward and just go about either having to replace guys or playing without them.“
▪ With Xavien Howard out due to both injury and potential illness, the Dolphins added another cornerback Wednesday, claiming Breon Borders off waivers. Undrafted out of Duke, Borders is on his seventh different NFL roster since entering the league in 2017. He has appeared in 13 games in his career, with seven tackles.
This story was originally published August 12, 2020 at 1:01 PM.
