Dolphins wanted to keep it secret. But Dolphins starting quarterback Sunday is known
The great Miami Dolphins starting quarterback mystery for this week is solved. It’s Tua Tagovailoa.
The rookie is scheduled to start against the Cincinnati Bengals at 1 p.m. on Sunday, according to a source. Dolphins coaches and trainers will monitor him during warmups prior to the game and assuming no irregularities are spotted, he will make his fifth start of the season.
Tagovailoa missed last week’s start and has been limited in practice the past two weeks with a left thumb injury he suffered during practice Nov. 25.
Ryan Fitzpatrick started against the New York Jets in a 20-3 victory last Sunday.
The two quarterbacks shared first-team snaps during this week, but Tagovailoa got the majority of those, per a source.
Dolphins coach Brian Flores has wanted to keep word of his starter quiet this week. The coach is guarded about practically everything, but is especially cloaked about information he deems to affect the competitive advantage of a game, and knowing the identity of the starting quarterback is perhaps chief among those nuggets of information.
Flores taunted reporters Friday saying he and his coaching staff would make their final decision on their starter minutes after his final press conference of the week, thus keeping that information out of the media.
“We’ll make a decision probably here in the next hour, right when I’m done with media,” Flores said laughing. “Right when I’m done with media. Next time you guys see me, it will be postgame and you’ll have the information by then.”
He laughed again.
Except word began to leak Saturday when agent Leigh Steinberg, one of Tagovailoa’s representatives, wrote a Facebook post saying he was traveling from his home state of California to South Florida to “see Tua play Bengals...”
Someone clearly alerted Steinberg that he had spilled the beans, so to speak, on the Dolphins big secret, so he edited the post to say he was attending the game to watch the “Dolphins play Bengals.”
A source in the Tagovailoa camp then tried to walk back the post by telling national reporters that someone who represents Tagovailoa routinely attends Dolphins games, regardless of whether Tagovailoa is playing or not.
Too late.
Also, the Dolphins on Saturday did not elevate quarterback Reid Sinnett from the practice squad as they did prior to the Jets game. The team would need to make that move if, once again, Tagovailoa was about to miss the game because the club typically takes at least two quarterbacks into each game.
Assuming Tagovailoa gets through warmups without drama, he will get a chance to finally put a poor outing in his last start against Denver behind him.
Tagovailoa was benched in the fourth quarter of that game and then missed the next game against New York. Today against the Bengals, Tagovailoa faces the NFL’s 22nd ranked pass defense. The Bengals allow an average of 253.7 passing yards per game.
One final thing: If Tagovailoa is not effective during the game, because of his thumb or otherwise, Flores might turn to Fitzpatrick again.
This story was originally published December 6, 2020 at 8:47 AM.
