Everything Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa said about his first NFL start | Opinion
You know by now it wasn’t awesome.
Tua Tagovailoa, a rookie making his first NFL start on Sunday against the Los Angeles Rams, played like a rookie making his first NFL start. No, there weren’t huge mistakes such as interceptions. And he did suffer from some dropped passes.
But he obviously wasn’t sharp.
So after he completed 12 of 22 passes for 93 yards with one touchdown and one fumble, Tagovailoa talked about his outing. This is everything he said:
Question: Just in general, how do you feel you played today?
Tua Tagovailoa: “I don’t think I played to the standard of what this offense is capable of. There were certain plays where I could have stepped up and made the right throw, made the right decision. But I’ve heard it many times from the guys in the locker room: I’s good that we still came out with the win. Aside from that, thank God we’ve got a good defense, so when we do start to string good plays together, we know that we can be able to make plays and then get the ball back and continue to try to do the same.”
Q: Just curious what the conversations were like on the sidelines with your teammates, whether it was QB Ryan Fitzpatrick or maybe anyone on the defense, when let’s say after the first series, the fumble or throughout the game, if they saw something, what the words of encouragement were throughout the game from them?
Tagovailoa: “It’s a long game. It’s a 60-minute game. The guys never really needed to say anything. It was more so we came to the sideline and I was kind of telling the guys, ‘Hey, that’s my fault. We’ll get it the next series.’ But a lot of the chatter was just talking about how we could fix certain things because they were giving us a little different look than what we expected and what we had seen in practice, and so we tried to kind of fix up what we were trying to do on offense.”
Q: Obviously, this was your first start. Can you take me through the emotions of, one, first getting out there, and two, your first touchdown pass to WR DeVante Parker?
Tagovailoa: “It was fun just being able to go out there and play a full 60-minute game now. Being that it was my first start in the NFL. We really faced a really good defense. I’m proud of what we’ve got to do offensively, but I do know that there’s still a lot of things we need to correct come Monday. But you can’t say that this defense isn’t really good — they’ve got [Michael] Brockers, they’ve got Aaron Donald, they’ve got [Taylor] Rapp, Jalen Ramsey and all these other guys — and not expect to be stopped a good amount of times. That’s just not realistic. We’ve just got to continue to work and see what we can do to fix, to see what we can do tomorrow with what we need to fix in getting ready for the Cardinals.”
Q: It has been a long journey for you, but could you take us into the moment after you slung that pass to wide receiver DeVante Parker in the end zone and just the celebration that happened afterward and if you have any plans for the ball?
Tagovailoa: “That was fun. That was really fun. It always feels good throwing a touchdown and being able to celebrate with your team and your teammates on the sideline are celebrating, as well. It’s not easy, especially like I said, scoring against a defense like that, but just enjoying the moment every time, just enjoying the moment. And I’m keeping the ball.”
Q: We all saw your first dropback and you landed on your back and fumbled the football. What was that sequence like? It seemed like a real prime welcome-to-the-NFL moment for you.
Tagovailoa: “That was a good hit. That was a good hit. It’s football. I tried to step up, make a throw, Aaron Donald swiped at the ball behind me, and I don’t know who the guy was that took me off my feet and pretty much body-slammed me, but hey, that’s football. I’m not going to lie, I did enjoy getting hit that first time. That was definitely a welcome.”
Q: Did you have a chance to talk to your parents?
Tagovailoa: “I didn’t get a chance to talk to my parents yet. I’m going to go home after this and probably see them. I’ll get to talk to them then.”
This story was originally published November 1, 2020 at 10:43 PM.
