Where does Tua fall in the draft after hip surgery? NFL people weigh in.
Alabama quarterback Tua Tagovailoa’s injuries (dislocated hip and a posterior wall fracture) could end up giving the Dolphins an opportunity to draft him even if their draft position worsens. But should they?
That decision — especially if it’s a choice between Tua and Oregon’s Justin Herbert, in a scenario where LSU’s Joe Burrow goes first to the Bengals — looms as the most important call of this rebuild, and it’s one they’re unprepared to make until: 1) They have studied Tua’s medical files, if he turns pro (which is no sure thing). 2) They see how Herbert completes his final season. 3) They interview both players, something that’s of premium importance to general manager Chris Grier. (And lower-rated QBs such as Washington’s Jacob Eason and Georgia’s Jake Fromm could emerge as later options, among others.)
While it’s early to know exactly how Tua’s stock will be impacted by his latest injury — he had surgery Monday and his doctor says a full recovery is expected — NFL people are forming initial opinions, based on not only the hip but durability concerns raised by two previous ankle injuries. Yahoo reports it’s unlikely he will be healthy enough to work out for teams before the draft.
Some of the feedback:
▪ ESPN analyst Mike Tannenbaum, the Dolphins’ former executive vice president/football operations, told me that “as of now” it would be too risky to use a top-10 pick on Tua, but that he would “need more information on his medical” situation to make that final determination.
On the Golic and Wingo ESPN Radio show, Tannenbaum said: “We are going to be talking about this through April because permutations are historic. You can declare for the draft and evaluate how that goes.
“If I’m New England, I take him at the bottom of the first round. I say, ‘You’re not playing one year, maybe two because we are going to make sure you are 1,000 percent healthy.’ I have a lot of history with this injury. Orthopedic surgeons hate this injury... because recovery is hard to predict.
“We live in a world where they want certainty. ACL is X, Achilles is Y. They don’t know on this injury; it will be body specific because blood supply is so poor. If I’m Tua and drafted in the middle of the first round by the Bengals, I may say I have world-class care, have more leverage than John Elway did and... Eli Manning did, I will rehab myself for a year and go back in the draft.”
▪ ESPN’s Mel Kiper Jr.: “When you look at the medical situation — that has to play out. We don’t have all the answers on that to what the hip situation is moving forward in terms of the rehab. But... the ankles, slight knee and lower extremity injuries over the last couple of years have obviously affected Tua and impact how teams will view him moving forward, especially when you think about Joe Burrow at LSU with the great year he’s had.
“[Burrow] moved up to that No. 1 quarterback spot up near the top of the draft board. Then, Tua was right in with Justin Herbert. Tua doesn’t have the big-time arm strength and now the durability concern is obviously real and has been for a period of time because of the ankle injuries. So, this kind of complicates matters when you’re competing with two other quarterbacks who are highly rated. It puts [Tua] right now third in line instead of No. 1 or No. 2 when you project forward to late April.”
▪ ESPN’s Todd McShay: He dropped Tagovailoa to 13th on his big board of draft-eligible prospects, with Burrow second and Herbert fifth.
McShay’s views, via ESPN.com: “Ranking him for the 2020 draft is difficult at this point, and evaluators will have to take this process legitimately one week at a time as we continue to gather as much information as we can. There have been plenty of cases of quarterbacks coming off injury and still being a first-round pick (think Sam Bradford, among others), and NFL teams will certainly want to capitalize on the fifth-year option that comes with a Day 1 selection, but this is no standard injury. Teams will have to take these medical concerns — along with his prior durability concerns as a whole — into serious consideration.
“That said, I’d still rank Tagovailoa as QB1 above Burrow if he were healthy today, and I still have him as a first-round pick. He is a special talent. The lefty has elite accuracy at all three levels, a smooth delivery, solid arm strength and excellent touch. And his anticipation and fast eyes are high-end. Tagovailoa ended his season with 2,840 passing yards, 33 touchdown passes (third in the FBS) and just three interceptions. His 94.5 Total QBR leads the nation, he completed 71.4 percent of his passes (sixth best) and his 11.3 yards per attempt ranks third in the FBS.”
▪ Former Packers, Raiders and Falcons executive Ken Herock told me he “wouldn’t take Tua in the first round” because “it’s too big a risk. I look at him and he’s not a big, physical guy.” He believes Burrow and Herbert are better equipped for NFL success, anyway.
Herock looks at this from an interesting perspective, because he drafted Brett Favre 33rd overall for Atlanta in 1991 even though “our doctors said he would only play five years because of his hip injury.” Herock regrets succumbing to coach Jerry Glanville’s demands that Herock trade Favre, which Herock did (to Green Bay) for a first-rounder after Glanville complained repeatedly about Favre’s drinking and immaturity.
The difference is that Favre was far more durable in college than Tua and had a bigger build. And Tua’s hip issue was more serious than Favre’s coming out of college.
▪ Los Angeles Rams team doctor Michael Banffy, an orthopedic surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, told AL.com that “I don’t think this will knock him out of the first round, for sure. It will probably knock him out of the top five, but I think that it all depends on how he progressively heals and how he looks at the combine.”
Banffy said his “hip is back in the socket. Hip is stable. Just have to get him to heal up… What can happen with the dislocation is that blood vessels will either tear or they’ll be placed on stretch for so long that the bone itself will lose its blood supply and that will cause death of the bone. If you get it reduced right away, the idea is that will minimize the risk. But this is still something that you have to watch and it might not even present itself for a couple of months, similar to the way it did with Bo Jackson.”
▪ An NFL executive, to Yahoo’s Pete Thamel: “You don’t know what you’re drafting. I see him maybe going toward the end of the first round.”
▪ Agent Drew Rosenhaus, on his weekly segment with Steve Shapiro on WSVN-Fox 7: “I’ve had a number of clients that have dislocated the hip but did not need surgery. If you need surgery, it’s bad. I had a client early in my career, Marvin Jones, who had an injury like that and had surgery.
“I hate to say it, but it’s going to be tough for him to get back to 100 percent, just based on my experience. It’s very, very sad. It’s definitely going to affect his draft stock. This is a worse injury that a torn ACL, torn Achilles. You name it. It’s one of the worst injuries you can have in football.”
▪ Several NFL people - including draftnik Tony Pauline and former Patriots executive Michael Lombardi — have advocated he return to Alabama in 2020 but not play there.
Pauline, on profootballnetwork.com, has Tagovailoa falling to 31st in the first round, behind four other QBs — Burrow, Herbert, Utah State’s Jordan Love and Washington’s Jacob Eason.
▪ And Albert Breer, in an SI.com piece, raises another possibility: Tagovailoa applying for the supplemental draft — to be held next July — meaning a team could use using a 2021 pick in the round it drafts him next July.
As Breer wrote: “NFL rules dictate that players have to prove changing circumstances to gain entry into the supplemental draft and, theoretically, Tagovailoa could claim improved health prompted him to enter the July version of the draft. This option would allow him to stay at Alabama, or go out on his own, to rehab, then work out for teams in June.”
Here’s my Friday piece with a look at the Dolphins’ unheralded group of young corners - most of them undrafted - and how they’ve done, plus injury news.
This story was originally published November 22, 2019 at 4:35 PM.
