‘All things are on the table.’ Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel addressed backup QB need
Backup quarterback remains one of the Miami Dolphins’ greatest needs.
With Tua Tagovailoa firmly secured as quarterback one, a quality backup is needed considering his injury history. Keep in mind: Tagovailoa has only completed one full season in his first four years in the NFL.
The question then becomes what type of quarterback – a rookie or veteran – do the Dolphins prefer. And nearly two month after Dolphins general manager Chris Grier told reporters that “ every stone will be unturned” to find a backup quarterback, it seems that he and coach Mike McDaniel are in agreement.
“I prioritize people that are adept at passing, young or old,” McDaniel quipped Tuesday. “I think all things are on the table. There’s some guys that we’re pretty interested in in free agency, and there’s guys in the draft as well. So I think both avenues afford us an opportunity to improve the room at that position, which I think was pretty obvious, it’s on everybody’s tip of the tongue that needs to be a focus of ours and it is.”
This comes roughly a month the Senior Bowl where both Alabama’s Jalen Milroe and Oregon’s Dillon Gabriel told the Miami Herald that they had conversations with the Dolphins about their potential backup role. A rookie quarterback would come with its own lists of challenges as he tries to master a whole new language, however, the Dolphins could fall in love with someone like Milroe and choose to have him at third-string. Just look at how the Arizona Cardinals assistant Blaine Gautier, who worked with Milroe at the Senior Bowl, described the Alabama quarterback.
“People want to just continue to see his accuracy and get through the progressions of his reads but I think that was the purpose of coming here and competing this week was to learn those things and how to just stand in there as a quarterback,” Gautier said Jan 30. “We didn’t even give those guys no options to run stuff because we wanted to actually see those guys wheel and deal down the field and work through those progressions.”
The veteran market, however, has several quality options. At the top of the list are players like Sam Darnold, Aaron Rodgers, Justin Fields and Russell Wilson. While the Dolphins would love to have one of them as a backup, the more viable candidates are Marcus Mariota, Jameis Winston and Jimmy Garoppolo.
Mariota and Garoppolo are two of the most intriguing options. For Mariota, it’s the connection with Tagovailoa. Not only are they both Hawaiian, Tagovailoa looked up to the 2014 Heisman Trophy winner.
“He was a big role model for a lot of us kids back home; but I think fourth grade when I first met him at a football camp, man, [he was] just a humble guy, a hard worker,” Tagovailoa said of Mariota in 2020. “He was one of the guys who kind of took me under his wing, so to say, when we went to passing camps at our alma mater, at Saint Louis in Hawaii.”
Added Tagovailoa: “Marcus has just been the standard a lot of the kids back home look to as a person, as a human being and being as good as he was, that didn’t change who he was as a person.”
Garoppolo, on the other hand, will have familiarity with the Dolphins’ scheme. He and McDaniel spent both joined the San Francisco 49ers in 2017 and spent the following five seasons together before the latter became the Dolphins head coach. Garoppolo’s institutional knowledge could certainly not only benefit Tagovailoa from a preparation perspective but could serve well if the young quarterback goes down. McDaniel even praised Garoppolo during the 2024 regular season.
“It really puts into perspective the relationship that quarterbacks have with the team and the players that they are playing with, because to win football games like Jimmy did, your team has to believe in you,” McDaniel said Sept. 26.
Although it’s impossible to predict what the Dolphins will actually do, they could likely do settle in the middle: sign a backup in free agency then grab a rookie in the draft for a third string. That would give the Dolphins not only the veteran presence in the quarterback room that is needed but also a young guy who could potentially add value down the road. Free agency can’t come soon enough.
