Tua Tagovailoa’s first outing in the Atlanta Falcons uniform came with plenty of hype attached. However, the quarterback’s debut didn’t unfold the way fans had envisioned. Tua Tagovailoa didn’t hold back on criticizing his performance.
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“Definitely not up to standard. On the first drive, second play, I couldn’t even handle the snap cleanly small things like that cost us rhythm,” Tua Tagovailoa said, via Joe Patrick. “What we showed out there doesn’t reflect the hard work we’ve put in the first two weeks of training camp, nor does it do justice to what the coaches have installed.
“It starts with me: I need to be cleaner and get back in rhythm. I thought we had a chance to spark something on that screen to B‑Rod and build from there, but I didn’t execute. I’ll be better.”
With Michael Penix Jr. still working his way back from that partially torn ACL, Tagovailoa got the start against the Broncos. Atlanta found itself staring at a 24-0 deficit by the second quarter, which is about as rough a start as you can have.
Tagovailoa went 3-of-5 through the air for 22 yards, finishing with a 70.4 passer rating. He scored zero touchdowns and remained pick-free.
But the bigger issue was Atlanta’s offense just couldn’t get anything going. Denver dictated the pace early, and the Falcons struggled to string together any real drives while Tagovailoa was under center. UDFA rookie Jack Strand scored the only touchdown of the game.
According to Falcons coach Kevin Stefanski, it was hard to really grade Tagovailoa’s outing since he only got a handful of snaps.
“I evaluate the entire offense in that regard,” Stefanski said. “So, didn’t move the ball well enough as an offense. Certainly, there’s some things that we can clean up. We did drop a snap out there. So, those are little plays that we will continue to work on. But hard to give a grade on that fewest amount of … sample size.”
Meanwhile, in a totally different corner of the football world, something wild happened at the 2026 World Flag tournament. Team USA lost, and not just any loss, their first defeat in competitive flag football in 14 years. The team that pulled it off? American Samoa, with Taulia Tagovailoa, Tua’s younger brother, suiting up for them.
The younger Tagovailoa’s stat line was much more impressive than the older’s: Taulia was 29-of-36 for 213 passing yards and scored a whopping five touchdowns in American Samoa’s 38-32 victory over Team USA.
It was topsy-turvy for the initial phase of the game. But once the connection between Taulia and Tai Tiedemann (a former minor league baseball player) extended American Samoa’s lead to 18-13, the USA never rebounded, according to The Sporting News’ Andrew Gitto.
For Tua, it’s back to the practice field to fix the small things before it counts; for Taulia, it was a performance worth patting himself on the back for.