When will Dolphins unleash Tua Tagovailoa? Exploring the timetable as rookies report | Opinion
He didn’t start until the sixth game of his rookie season. When Dan Marino finally did start, he threw for 322 yards and three touchdowns. It was electric. Palpably, the NFL’s next big star had introduced himself.
I once asked Don Shula what he was thinking as he watched his new quarterback’s first start.
“What took me so long!?” the coach answered, not kidding in the least. “Why didn’t I give him the ball sooner! He was that special right away.”
Thirty-seven years later, Miami Dolphins rookies report for training camp Thursday, five days ahead of the full team. The new quarterback is Tua Tagovailoa. He is the gift Dolfans cannot wait to unwrap and enjoy. Brian Flores is the man now who’ll decide when that happens. When, in effect, the Dolphins’ future — the next great chapter in franchise history — begins for real.
Don’t hold your breath, folks. Every indication is that history will repeat and that Tagovailoa will begin his pro career as an understudy to Ryan Fitzpatrick just as Marino was to David Woodley, before the new No. 1 draft pick out of Alabama finally is handed the football and the keys to the team.
I would love to be wrong. I would love to imagine that, in the September 13 regular season opener at New England, it’s Tua time, and the rookie is let loose like a rodeo bull leaving his holding pen.
The thing is, NFL head coaches haven’t changed all that much over time. Their default handling of rookie QBs is caution. They worry too much of a burden too soon will “damage” a young passer’s psyche.
That’s any time, any year.
But this isn’t like any time or any year. In the summer of 2020, circumstances — the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic — have conspired to hugely increase the likelihood Miami will be extremely conservative with Tagovailoa’s career arc. And that is only partly because of the physical issue: the November surgery to repair a dislocated hip.
Tagovailoa has been a Dolphin since becoming the fifth overall draft pick on April 23, but it’s as if his career here really starts Thursday. It will be the first time since early March that the team has seen him personally, “hands on,” as Flores likes to say.
The coronavirus wiped out rookie minicamp and dozens of offseason practice and meeting days. A rookie quarterback needing to learn a new offense has missed months of direct tutelage with coaches and on-field work with teammates.
“My hopes don’t get too high or too low until I see a guy in a huddle,” Flores said last week. “When I see a guy make it through practice — multiple practices — it’s hard to say we’re going to do this, that or the other things at game speed.”
Tagovailoa’s agent Chris Cabott says his client “is physically all ready to go.” The player says the same. His medical team declared him football ready in March.
Still, the Dolphins will not unleash Tagovailoa to start his first game until their doctors make that decision and until Flores sees it with his own eyes in training camp. And until all are convinced Tagoaviloa has absorbed the playbook of new offensive coordinator Chan Gailey and gained a full comfort level mentally.
The caution level with Tagovailoa will be such that one club executive who told me nothing has been ruled out said, “That includes a redshirt year.” Meaning the quarterback doesn’t play at all as a rookie and is unleashed in 2021. Although that same source said the probability is a game or two off the bench before Tagovailoa starts around midseason (just like Marino in ‘83).
The fact the coronavirus has wiped out the entire preseason further increases the likelihood Tagovailaoa will start the season as Fitzpatrick’s understudy.
Miami will have in training camp a league-high 13 2020 draft picks and spent the most money in NFL free agency this spring — a roster upheaval that means the Dolphins may suffer more than most teams from the wiped out offseason program and eliminated preseason.
“They’re all doing everything they can possibly do, but quite honestly, it’s hard not to have your hands on ‘em,” Flores said in a June Zoom call. “Tua is working hard picking up information, but you wanna get your hands on him. I haven’t seen him. Our doctors haven’t seen him.”
The seeing, the hands on, starts Thursday.
For Flores, being back with players, back in meetings, back on a field, will symbolize a return to normalcy in anything but normal times.
His is a team situated at one of the epicenters of a pandemic still surging, and killing, the national death toll now at 145,000.
He understands the football season ahead, if it happens at all, might go on with no fans in the stadium or a limited number.
He also is a man of color in a time of national protests over the killing of George Floyd and others. A close friend of Flores’, Chris Beaty, 38, was killed last month while participating in a peaceful protest in Indianapolis.
Nothing is normal. That is why Flores has longed for a return to the routine of coaching and calls the football field “a place to get away for a little bit.”
The distraction of myriad football decisions await him. The biggest by a lot, the one encapsulating the excitement of fans, is: When will the rookie QB be ready to play? Anticipation grows; it is tangible now as rookies report to camp. But as for an answer to when it will be Tua time?
“Eventually” will have to do for now.
This story was originally published July 22, 2020 at 11:58 AM.
