After injury to Tua, 3 years of major decisions in rebuild are up for grabs
Today’s question: What does it mean when a team constantly repeats it needs to “watch the films” to explain what went wrong after being blitzed on his home field, 35-0?
Because that’s what the Dolphins fell back on, one by one, when asked what went wrong in this uglyfest against Buffalo, from the offensive line to defensive line to the coaching.
Let’s help them. Let’s cue the tape to one play the entire organization should watch and ponder: Four minutes into the game. Fourth-and-two at the Buffalo 48-yard line.
Tua Tagovailoa takes a shotgun snap and … … the whole Dolphins rebuild fell apart. Well, OK, that’s overstating it. Maybe.
It’s fair to say this is the concern in their biggest decisions all along. Watching that one play everyone from general manager Chris Grier has to wonder if Humpty Dumpty can be put back together again.
Right tackle Jesse Davis got beat like an egg, Tagovailoa got rocked in throwing in incompletion and then the big fear of them all happened. Tua didn’t get up. Well, he got up and then sunk down in the grass of Hard Rock stadium.
He then walked gingerly back to the sideline, went on a cart and was never seen again Sunday.
“Tough to watch,” guard Robert Hunt said.
The X-rays of Tua’s ribs were negative, meaning nothing was broken. The conclusion here is there’s a big crack in the rebuild, though.
Even before then, on the Dolphins’ first possession, Tua was sacked on two of the first three plays. The Bills didn’t respect the offensive line, everyone will say, with some good merit.
But these were blitzes off the corner by cornerback Taron Johnson and safety Micah Hyde. Each was untouched. Those sacks weren’t the offensive line’s fault. The linemen held their blocks — OK, yeah, for once, as the day played out.
The single Dolphins running backs on those plays — Myles Gaskin on the first sack; Malcolm Brown on the second — stepped up to look help inside the line.
“He didn’t see the blitz,” one NFL scout said, meaning Tua didn’t see it. He didn’t see the defensive back coming. He didn’t move protection there. So he got hit, sacked and the series ended.
That’s entirely different from the play that ended his day. Buffalo’s A.J. Epenesa sprinted by Davis at the snap like Usain Bolt. He reached Tua a second after the shotgun snap from center.
He then planted Tua after his pass in a manner that could’ve been a roughing-the-passer penalty in this age of the bubble-wrapped quarterbacks. Instead, Tua was done.
A big hit? Sure. A hit that could knock out any quarterback? Maybe. But one of the real fears, the tangible questions, about Tua coming out was his injury history. Let’s be real: Small guys taking big
hits don’t last long in the NFL.
Ryan Tannehill took big hits in being sacked a league-high 58 times in 2013. He didn’t miss a game. Ryan Fitzpatrick was sacked 40 times in the Tank-forTua year of 2019. He kept playing.
Tua is now missing games with his second injury in 11 starts.
Now, why did this big hit happen? Because the right tackle position has been a fail by this organization. You can love Davis. You want him on your team. He
is veteran and versatile. He plays hard despite having a knee issue since the summer.
He also wasn’t Plan A for right tackle. Rookie Liam Eichenberg was. That’s why Grier traded up with a second- and third-round pick for him. It’s why Eichenberg spent all offseason learning right tackle … until he moved to left guard as a reserve … and started Game 1 at left tackle (due to COVID-19 fallout).
Davis soon left Sunday’s game
due to his bad knee. And let’s not go overboard on him. You’d need a panel of Olympic judges to decide which Dolphins offensive lineman had the worse day as the game went on. Six sacks. Only 3.6 yards per rush.
Those are losing numbers. Is it all on the players? Is it on the fourth offensive line coach in coach Brian Flores’ three years? Is it on Grier for swinging and missing with handfuls of draft picks and free-agent money on the line? Was it just the Bills having a big day?
There’s a lot of season left to answer these questions. But one thing for sure. That idea they kept repeating about needing to, “watch the film?”
The film will look exactly like the 35-0 game. And that one play, the one Tua was hurt on, is scary in ways far beyond Sunday — ways that cover three years of big decisions that look up for grabs right now.