After the Miami Dolphins benched Tua Tagovailoa on Wednesday, Mike McDaniel met the media the next day and spoke candidly about the reality of the quarterback position. He said, “Playing quarterback and being a starting quarterback and then being a franchise quarterback, these are all things that are very complex.” To his credit, the HC wasn’t wrong.

But a few teams, including the Dolphins, are still searching for answers despite once believing Tua was their long-term guy. But if you ask Dolphins legend Dan Marino, he’ll tell you the issue goes deeper than simply labeling someone a franchise QB. For Marino, the quarterback position itself is the real challenge. In fact, he’s called it the hardest position in all of team sports. And he has plenty of reasons why.

“I tell people it’s the hardest position to play in all team sports, and it’s hands down because of everything that’s on that one player, the quarterback,” Marino said. “But that’s it. It’s like the clock in your head, the timing, knowing what coverage of its man coverage, zone coverage, who you want to go to, all those things are involved, and it takes a special person to do that.”

Coming from someone who spent 17 seasons in the NFL and finished with a 147–93 record, Marino isn’t exaggerating. If anything, he’s simplifying it. Great quarterbacks aren’t great just because they throw well. They’re great because they see the game faster than everyone else. In reality, a quarterback has only a couple of seconds to scan the defense, understand what it’s doing, decide where to go with the ball, and get it out. And that’s just the surface.

As Vizual Edge breaks it down, arm strength and accuracy are only the basics. Plenty of quarterbacks can throw. Reading a defense is the real separator. On most plays, a QB has less than three seconds to scan the field, identify man versus zone, recognize pressure or a blitz, find the right receiver, and deliver an accurate throw, all while 250-pound defenders are closing in.

To pull that off, quarterbacks work through three key phases.

First comes the pre-snap read. Before the ball is snapped, the QB is hunting for clues. Where are the safeties, one high or two? How much cushion are the corners giving? Are linebackers creeping toward the line, hinting at pressure? This stage is all about anticipation and predicting what the defense might do.

Then comes post-snap confirmation. Once the ball is snapped, defenses start lying. Safeties rotate, blitzes come from unexpected places, and coverages shift. The QB has to immediately re-process everything and adjust on the fly. That demands fast thinking, mental flexibility, and strong short-term memory.

Finally, there are progression reads. If the first option isn’t open, the QB has to snap to the second, then the third, sometimes flipping his vision across the entire field. This is where mistakes happen. Miss a defender in your peripheral vision by a split second, and the play turns into an interception. It’s something Tua has already experienced 15 times this season.

When all of those pieces come together, you get quarterbacks like Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers. Brady finished his 23-year career with an NFL-record 649 touchdown passes while maintaining a remarkably low interception rate of just 1.8 percent. Rodgers, meanwhile, owns the best TD-to-interception ratio in league history at 4.25-to-1 and the highest passer rating ever at 102.5.

And that’s the gap Marino is really talking about. Not arm talent. Not labels. But the rare ability to process, anticipate, and decide faster than everyone else. That’s why the NFL legend believes it requires a special person for quarterbacking. For Tua, though, a few of those areas became hard to ignore. And eventually, they led the Dolphins to hit pause and look elsewhere.

Why did the Dolphins bench Tua Tagovailoa?

The Dolphins head into Week 16 against the Cincinnati Bengals with a very different look under center. Tua Tagovailoa is out. Quinn Ewers is in. And a day after making the call to bench his quarterback, Coach McDaniel didn’t hide from the weight of the decision.

“I think this is a player that his M.O. had been growth, and just an exceptional learner, and he’s (Tua’s) always evolving. There’s compounding variables that you can’t just pinpoint one or two things, and I still believe that his growth can continue. But I couldn’t responsibly play this next game when I thought what the team needed was available and live in hope and wish and stuff.”

In plain terms, McDaniel couldn’t keep rolling Tua out there and hoping it would eventually click. And this wasn’t just about one bad stretch in 2025. The cracks had been forming for a while. Since arriving in Miami, McDaniel built one of the league’s most creative offenses. But somewhere along the way, the Dolphins blurred the line between “this system works” and “this quarterback is replaceable.” And that distinction matters.

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Back in 2022, McDaniel designed a tightly controlled offense around Tua’s strengths. Quick throws. Heavy motion. RPOs and play-action that stretched defenses horizontally. The ball came out fast, deep shots were selective, and Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle did most of the damage after the catch. For a while, it worked.

Tua thrived in rhythm-based football. He was decisive, accurate in the short game, and lethal when the first read was clean. But he was never a quarterback who consistently dropped back, scanned the entire field, and attacked tight windows when structure broke down. The numbers quietly told that story.

• In 2022: 3,548 total yards, but over 1,200 YAC and 1,431 off play-action
• In 2023, over 4,600 yards, but over 2,100 were YAC-driven, with another 1,100 coming via play-action.

By 2024, defenses caught on. LBs sat in throwing lanes. Flat routes disappeared. YAC dried up. Then came 2025. Hill went down with a season-ending injury. The RPO game faded. And suddenly, Tua was asked to play more traditional quarterback football. That’s where things unraveled. The interceptions piled up to 15. The efficiency vanished. And eventually, McDaniel had no choice but to make a change.

In short, Tua didn’t produce the offense. The offense produced Tua. And when you zoom out, it reinforces exactly what Dan Marino has been saying all along: being a franchise quarterback isn’t about arm talent or production in the right system. It’s about processing, adaptability, and surviving when the system stops protecting you. And it requires a special person to do that, as the NFL legend believes.