Tua Tagovailoa came to the NFL as a college football star. However, within six years, he became an afterthought. Cut by the Miami Dolphins this year, the quarterback admitted it was not easy surviving that reality.
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“Well, I would say the real aspect of it is, one, it’s hard, you know. There’s no other way to work around that,” he said on SiriusXM NFL Radio on August 18. “You can try to trick yourself into thinking it’s not as hard as what you’re thinking. But it’s hard to go through something like that.”
Tua Tagovailoa’s NFL journey was never smooth. In 2022, his third season in the league, he suffered two concussions and considered retirement. He had a strong performance the next season, taking the Dolphins to the playoffs. But since then, Tagovailoa hasn’t reached his ceiling; he’s thrown for a total of 5,527 yards over the last two years, and his record stands at 12-13. He didn’t look like the franchise quarterback Miami envisioned him to be.
Tagovailoa was benched in favor of seventh-round rookie Quinn Ewers ahead of the Week 16 game against the Cincinnati Bengals last season. By that time, it had become clear that Tagovailoa would leave the team. ESPN said he was the most “ineffective” QB in the league at that time, and his QBR ranked 30th, despite the Dolphins having won five games.
In Atlanta, he now faces the pressure of keeping his career afloat. However, he did not brood over his past and is accepting the challenge that lies ahead of him. He credited legendary Alabama head coach Nick Saban for helping him manage the tough situation
“One thing that I ended up taking from Coach Saban that stuck with me as I was going through that process, being benched last year, not being able to finish out the season with the guys, and then obviously being released by the Dolphins and then being a free agent was, ‘Things don’t happen to you. They happen for you.’ And that kind of stuck with me.
“I don’t know what had happened like that was gonna be ‘for’ me throughout this. But I think that the thing is like, it’s not over. Like, the journey is not over, right? Like it happened ‘for’ you. There’s something good that has to come out of this.”
For now, Tagovailoa’s career is still on life support. He had a tough preseason game against the Denver Broncos, going just 3-of-5 passes for 22 yards. Head coach Kevin Stefanski and the quarterback have both been critical of his performance, but they are also looking forward to improvement.
But will Tua Tagovailoa be able to return to form later, after everything? We will have to wait and watch.