Tagovailoa would be ‘more than happy’ if Dolphins draft him, shares other thoughts on team
Alabama quarterback Tua Tagovailoa said Thursday he would be “more than happy” if the Dolphins selected him in April’s draft and that he will be physically able to play in the 2020 season if a team wants to use him as a rookie.
In an interview with the Miami Herald that was arranged by DirecTV, Tagovailoa made clear he has no preference among NFL teams but said there would be several things that would appeal to him about playing in Miami. Among them:
“I got to play here in their stadium about two years ago,” he said of an Alabama appearance in a college football playoff game. “Aside from that, the weather is so similar to Hawaii and what I’m used to. It’s warm pretty much year round. It’s tropical. It’s a nice city.”
He said it would be neat to be able to learn from Dan Marino, a Dolphins executive who attends many of the quarterback meetings during the season.
“Yeah, it would be awesome, regardless if they still have Ryan Fitzpatrick,” Tagovailoa said. “It’s always good to learn from people who have done it before you. Dan Marino would tell you the game has evolved since he played. Being able to learn from his side and being able to learn from Fitzpatrick would be awesome to kind of get a sense of how they prepare for games, how they go about preparing for defenses.”
Tagovailoa heard that Marino, during a USA Today interview, said this week that Tagovailoa is “a heck of a player. A much better college player than I ever was.”
To which Tua said: “I don’t even deserve that praise. I haven’t even done anything in the NFL. To hear something like that from him means a lot.”
Tagovailoa said he was flattered by the Tank for Tua narrative that was pushed by some media members and some Dolphins fans this past season.
“It’s flattering; it’s really flattering,” he said. “You grow up as a little kid seeing the support and love NFL fans are showing you when you’re in college. It gets to a point where it’s surreal because you are not in the NFL yet, but you feel so close to it. It’s very flattering. I’m privileged they think so highly of me.”
Tagovailoa said he has never met Dolphins owner Stephen Ross, general manager Chris Grier and coach Brian Flores and doesn’t know when he will meet with the Dolphins (though that will assuredly happen before the draft).
The Dolphins hold Tagovailoa in high regard, according to multiple sources, and have interest in drafting him if his medicals check out.
Tagovailoa said he’s not concerned that two other former Alabama players — defensive back Minkah Fitzpatrick and running back Kenyan Drake — asked the Dolphins to trade them this past season.
“They probably all had their own needs, things they needed to get figured out within the organization and probably didn’t,” Tagovailoa said. “They had to make business decisions as well. They did what’s best for them, and I support them with whatever decision they made. But I would say in my case, it’s different. I play one position. They can’t move me to all these other positions because it’s not what I do.”
Tagovailoa made his comments to the Miami Herald after appearing with ESPN personality Dan Le Batard in a “fireside chat” that DirecTV held as a perk for NFL Sunday Ticket subscribers.
Asked, on stage by Le Batard if he could give a message to Dolphins fans hoping the Dolphins select him, he said:
“I can’t promise anyone anything because I don’t know if I’m even going to get picked by the Dolphins. People love to trade up; they can trade up to two or three. The Dolphins could trade down for all we know. If I have the opportunity, I would be honored and privileged [to play for the Dolphins]. Like Lamar Jackson said, ‘you guys would have to get a Super Bowl out of me.’”
His family loves it in South Florida, and Tagovailoa has visited South Florida three times already.
According to Fox Sports 640’s Andy Slater, when a station employee told Tagovailoa’s father Galu that he hopes the Dolphins draft Tua, Galu responded: “So do we.”
Tagovailoa — who underwent surgery to repair his dislocated hip and posterior wall fracture on Nov. 18 — is approaching an important series of tests at the three-month mark of his hip rehab, which will come later this month. “If everything is good, doctors will let us loose a little more,” he told NFL Network’s Rich Eisen.
Tagovailoa, who strode around the Miami Beach Convention Center without a noticeable limp, said he feels “really good” and is on pace “to make a full recovery.”
“I’ll be participating in the Combine, but my main goal is not to win the 40, not to win the bench press, but to win my medical,” he told NFL Network. “I’m going to go over there looking to win my medical and then go in and interview with the teams. That’s pretty much what I’m going to do. And then hopefully there’s a pro day down the line, either late March or early April.”
He told me “I will be ready to play” in 2020, but “if I had the chance to sit behind a veteran quarterback and learn from him, I would be more than willing to do so.”
He told Fox Sports’ “First Things First” that he doesn’t know how high he will be drafted because “it’s just hard [to project], especially with the injury. No one can really tell if it’s going to heal correctly, [or] if it isn’t.”
He said “every team has health concerns, whether it’s my ankle, my hip.”
Tagovailoa addressed other topics in his DirecTV session with Le Batard:
▪ He said “the discipline growing up was very strict. I never went to a party until I went to college. College was the first time I attended a party that wasn’t under [his parents’ ] supervision.”
▪ He said “growing up, the guys I really look up to were Russell Wilson, Drew Brees. It’s not what they do on the field, but who they are off the field.”
▪ He said of his hip injury: “I can say I have had questions like that, ‘Why me?’ But my biggest thing is what’s next? What can we do to get this thing better as soon as possible.”
▪ He said it’s “very rare” for him not to be positive and upbeat. “We were rich with love [in his family]. The football player I am, they [his parents] couldn’t care less, as long as I remain person I am.”
▪ He said of Alabama coach Nick Saban: “He’s definitely a unique individual. A lot of people see someone who is very strict, hard on the guys. But behind closed doors, he’s very personable person. He really cares about his players and coaching staff. He likes to joke.
“He didn’t want to sway us to leave [Alabama to turn pro] or stay. His thing was, ‘we want what’s best for you.’”
Tagovailoa’s agent, Leigh Steinberg, clearly thinks highly of Dolphins owner Ross. Steinberg is honoring Ross with a humanitarian award at Steinberg’s annual Super Bowl party Saturday.
Here was my Thursday post with the message Frank Gore asked me to deliver to Chris Grier, what NFL people are saying about Brian Flores, the odd Anquan Boldin/Dave Wannstedt story from Thursday and more.
This story was originally published January 30, 2020 at 5:51 PM.
