After rare turnovers, a silver lining for Dolphins’ Tagovailoa as he prepares for Saints
Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa was blunt Wednesday when asked about his two interceptions that handed the New York Jets 10 points and threatened his team’s winning streak.
“That was bad football,” he said.
A recurring theme over the course of six consecutive wins for the Dolphins has been clean football, particularly on the part of Tagovailoa. Before last Sunday’s win over the Jets, he had only turned the ball over once since Week 10. However, an interception on the second drive contributed to a 10-0 deficit in the first quarter and a pick-six tied the game at 24 with under eight minutes left in the game.
If there’s any silver lining to the turnovers from Tagovailoa, it was his game-winning touchdown pass to wide receiver DeVante Parker and a change in style of play without his most trusted pass-catcher Jaylen Waddle, who was sidelined by coronavirus protocols.
Video from HBO’s “Inside the NFL” showed Tagovailoa saying he called an audible on the 11-yard slant to Parker.
“That was a screen play,” Tagovailoa said of the play. “It looked like they ran Cover-0 [blitz with no deep safeties]. “Everyone was just to the right. We gave DeVante a signal of what we wanted him to run and he executed that with the catch and finishing it off with a touchdown.”
It wasn’t the first time Tagovailoa has made a change in a key moment — he did the same on a pass to Parker that sealed the team’s Week 1 win over the New England Patriots — but just another sign of the maturation of the young quarterback heading into his first “Monday Night Football” game and a matchup with a New Orleans Saints defense that ranks among the NFL’s best.
“It’s not easy to do,” coach Brian Flores said of the audibles. “You’ve got 40 seconds to make that decision — really less than that — so it was good. It was nice to see him do that and we’re going to need that thought process, that type of decision-making this week against a very, very good football team in New Orleans.”
Throughout the season, Tagovailoa has ranked among the bottom of qualified passers in average depth of target (6.8 yards) but without Waddle, he had his most aggressive game of the season in terms of downfield passing. He averaged 9.6 air yards against the Jets, his most since Week 1 (9.2). 40.7 percent of Tagovailoa’s pass attempts traveled at least 10 air yards, also his most since Week 1.
It’s a stark change in philosophy for a player who in recent weeks had so much success on short passes. Part of that reluctance to pass downfield more may have just been the need to come back from a rare deficit, but Tagovailoa was nonetheless up to the task. Of his 11 pass attempts that traveled 10 air yards, he completed four, including two of his three “deep” passes — defined as attempts that travel at least 20 air yards — which led to a pair of touchdown drives.
“It helps having Jaylen back,” Tagovailoa said, “being that he’s a threat vertically and just speed-wise, whether it’s a juke route or whatever you want to call the routes that he runs, he gives us good opportunities for matchups, whether it’s a [linebacker] or is there down safety. And if they do switch it up, then it opens up other guys out there on the field.”
“I think they played well, actually,” said Waddle, who added he didn’t feel any symptoms while sidelined. “I think it’s always good when things aren’t going well and you overcome it. I feel like that’s good for [the] overall offensive standpoint. Everything’s not always going to be good and what we practiced and how we think it’s going to go. So, it’s always good to have things like that and overcome it.”
For an offense that has seen improvement from the offensive line’s blocking and running game alike, Monday night poses the unit’s toughest test from an opposing defense since the start of their winning streak. The Saints are rated the No. 4 defense in the league by Football Outsiders’ efficiency metrics and just shut out the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a 9-0 win on “Sunday Night Football.”
Additional expectations and pressure is naturally heaped on a young quarterback in the type of prime-time, stand-alone game that can shift narratives and perceptions, but Flores doesn’t want Tagovailoa’s mindset to change.
“I think his approach has got to be like any other game,” Flores said. “His preparation — it needs to stay the same as far as getting to know the Saints and what the players on their roster, their schemes, how they want to play situationally. We know it’s a tough opponent. Very good defense, well-coached. Dennis Allen is – I have a lot of respect for him and I think he’s done a great job with that defense for a number of years. We understand that. Tua has just got to prepare the right way but understand that this is going to be a tough test and he’s got to play well if we’re going to move the football.”
This story was originally published December 22, 2021 at 4:48 PM.
