Mold-breakers Tua Tagovailoa, Marcus Mariota could make history once again Saturday
A tiny school on a tiny island in a tiny state in the middle of the planet’s biggest body of water produced two of the best college quarterbacks ever.
On Saturday, those quarterbacks — Marcus Mariota and Tua Tagovailoa — could be a part of NFL history.
Never before have two Hawaiian-born quarterbacks faced off in the National Football League.
But if Raiders starter Derek Carr cannot go Saturday — he’s been dealing with a significant groin injury — the showdown will be set.
And Tagovailoa will try to beat the player he idolized since he was 10 years old.
Tagovailoa was just a fourth-grader when he first met Mariota, who is five years older and was already a rising star at Saint Louis School in Honolulu, at a football camp.
“Just a humble guy, a hard worker,” Tagovailoa said Wednesday, as the Dolphins continued their preparation for Mariota’s Raiders. “He was one of the guys that took me under his wing.”
But it was Tagovailoa’s left wing that caught Mariota’s eye. Tua’s talent was evident even at that age, and he was so advanced that instructors had him throw with the high schoolers. Some of the older kids weren’t pleased, but Mariota had his back.
“From there, I really looked up to him,” Tagovailoa said.
So much so that Tagovailoa wanted to followed Mariota to Oregon, where the latter won the Heisman Trophy in 2014, but the Ducks coaching staff somehow was late in recruiting him.
“Marcus has been the standard a lot of the kids back home look to — as a person, human being,” Tagovailoa added. “Being as a good as he was, that didn’t change who he was as a person.”
Mariota and Tagovailoa are alike in another way: Both have Samoan fathers (both of Tagovailoa’s parents are Samoan). And together, they’ve shattered past stereotypes of Polynesian athletes.
For most of the NFL’s history, people who looked like Mariota and Tagovailoa played mostly in the trenches.
There were just two Hawaiian-born quarterbacks who made it to the NFL before the Titans drafted Mariota second overall in 2015: Joe Francis, who played in the late-1950s, and James Ritchey, whose unremarkable NFL career was four decades later. Neither threw 50 passes in the NFL.
So Mariota is by far the most accomplished Hawaiian quarterback in league history, with more than 13,000 passing yards and 77 touchdowns in six NFL seasons.
“I think they’re both very talented,” Dolphins coach Brian Flores said. “They’ve had a lot of success throughout their careers, lives. From what I know about Marcus — I’ve never met him, but what I’ve heard just in talking to people — this is somebody who embodies a lot of the characteristics that we’re looking for in a football player.
“Tough, smart, team-first. Obviously Tua is that same way.”
Tagovailoa — who like Mariota was a Heisman Trophy finalist in college and a top-5 NFL Draft pick — is that way largely because of his parents, Galu and Diane. But also because he had a great role model from some of his earliest days in football.
Saturday, they meet again — but this time as equals.
“I thin it’s something super-cool for the kids to see back home in Hawaii,” Tagovailoa said. “I think if Marcus does get that opportunity, it will be really fun.”
This story was originally published December 23, 2020 at 4:46 PM.
