With newly-minted player of the week award, Dolphins’ Tagovailoa prepares for test vs. Bills
After rewriting the franchise and NFL record books last weekend, what can Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa do for an encore performance?
That’s the question for Tagovailoa after a career-best performance that many believe could serve as a positive inflection point for the third-year player’s trajectory.
On Wednesday, Tagovailoa was recognized with his first ever AFC Offensive Player of the Week award. The honor came in the aftermath of throwing for 469 yards and six touchdowns, both career-high marks, as he led the Dolphins in their comeback victory over the Baltimore Ravens.
“It was cool. That’s my first one,” Tagovailoa said after Wednesday’s practice. “But I’ve said this in many other interviews that individual success is only done within team success. If we never won that game, if the defense never did what they did, if our offense didn’t go out and put points on the board, none of that would have been possible. I amend that to our team.”
After a standout performance and player of the week honors, Tagovailoa prepares for his toughest test to date against a stout Buffalo Bills defense.
In three starts against the Bills, Tagovailoa is 0-3 with struggles that have been a microcosm of the Dolphins’ inability to match up with Buffalo in recent years. In those games, Tagovailoa has completed 56 percent of his passes for 579 yards, one touchdown and four interceptions. He’s also been sacked five times and was knocked out of the team’s Week 2 matchup last season with fractured ribs.
However, when the Dolphins host the Bills at Hard Rock Stadium on Sunday, they will do so with Tagovailoa off to his best start since being selected No. 5 overall in the 2020 Draft. After two games, Tagovailoa leads the NFL with 739 passing yards and is tied for the league lead with seven touchdowns.
“I feel comfortable with distributing the ball to our playmakers,” Tagovailoa said. “Just getting the ball into the hands of our playmakers and letting them go to work.”
While the collective NFL world has taken attention to the Dolphins’ 2-0 start, Tagovailoa — who entered the 2022 season with questions about his future in Miami — has been at the center of it. His odds to win league most valuable player rose from 40-to-1 last week to 16-to-1 this week, as the pairing of Tagovailoa with head coach Mike McDaniel has worked wonders through the first two games of the season.
“I think what Mike does with our offense is he complements everyone’s talents,” Tagovailoa said. “He complements everyone’s ability within the offense. For instance, if I’m good with RPOs, he’ll find some way to get the RPO implemented. If someone’s good running a certain route, we’ll find ways to get him the ball within that route a few different ways.”
If Tagovailoa is to prove his historic afternoon in Baltimore wasn’t just a product of small sample size and is a sign of what’s to come, he’ll have to do it against a Bills defense that once again looks like one of the best units in the NFL. Buffalo’s defense, ranked the league’s most efficient unit last season by analytics site Football Outsiders, has allowed just 17 points in two games.
McDaniel isn’t looking for Tagovailoa to replicate his production from the Week 2 outing but hopes the quarterback can lean on the experience in the future, particularly how he responded from throwing two interceptions in the first half to a flawless second half that included four touchdowns in the fourth quarter.
“You’re just not going to get betters stats week in and week out,” McDaniel said. “It’s bigger than that. It’s how he approaches his position, and if he feels himself pressing like he did when he threw that second pick, how fast can you get out of that yourself and utilize that whole experience for confidence moving forward.”
This story was originally published September 21, 2022 at 6:05 PM.
