Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Teammates need Tua to come out of his shell
MIAMI GARDENS — Teams don’t always vibe with their starting quarterback, especially early.
There are often factors like established relationships, on-andoff the field drama impacting those bonds.
When Chad Henne was the Miami Dolphins’ starting quarterback, most of the team preferred it were his backup, Chad Pennington, who were behind center.
Then coach Tony Sparano eventually caved, replacing Henne with Pennington during the 2010 season, and that lasted three snaps before Pennington suffered a shoulder injury in his one and only start that season, and Miami was forced to go back to Henne.
Ryan Tannehill had a flimsy hold on the locker room during his seven season tenure as Miami’s starter. At one point late in the 2014 season numerous members of his receiver unit unsuccessfully lobbied then-coach Joe Philbin to bench Tannehill for Matt Moore, a backup with a gunslinger’s reputation.
That failed coup fueled an existing divide on the team, and led to the removal of those receivers, and some defenders the next offseason. Tannehill had three more seasons as Miami’s starter before Miami moved on, trading him to Tennessee.
In no way am I forecasting that kind of fate on Tua Tagovailoa, but the 24-year-old does need to realize being good at the political game comes with his position.
A quarterback can’t be a man of mystery to his team, unless he’s balling like Patrick Mahomes, or has Aaron Rodgers’ resume.
That’s why Tagovailoa needs to start shaking hands and kissing his teammate’s babies, basically making himself more approachable and relatable to his Dolphins teammates because popularity and likability matters.
Part of the problem Tagovailoa has is there’s a disconnect between him and his teammates.
He’s “a little standoffish” as one player put it.
“I would say I’ve shown
glimpses of coming out of my shell with Coach [McDaniel],” Tagovailoa said last week. “I can be myself. That’s all I can say.
Problem is, more needs to be said, and done.
“I’ve always been like that, ever since high school. Yeah, I’m just not one to ‘Hey, we’re friends,’ after shaking hands,” Tagovailoa said when asked about his guarded personality. “I’ve got to really get to know you, really get to understand and feel comfortable.”
The problem is, Tagovailoa’s teammates and coaches need to get to know him to gain a level of comfort, and that hasn’t happened in his first two seasons in Miami.
I’ve heard about this disconnect since his rookie season, and hypothesized the root of it might have to do with who he replaced.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, who retired last week after playing 17 seasons, was
Mr. Popular in every one of the nine teams he played for. Fitzpatrick had a Pied Piper personality. He’s the type of individual people rally around, and for.
When Brian Flores took a 3-3 team from Fitzpatrick and handed it to Tagovailoa in 2020, I suspect it created some resentment, especially from the crowd that felt Fitzpatrick gave that 10-win Dolphins team a better chance to qualify for the postseason.
It didn’t help that Flores kept replacing Tagovailoa, the fifth pick in the 2020 NFL draft, with Fitzpatrick in games the offense needed to be rescued in the fourth quarter.
While Tagovailoa was the Dolphins’ chosen quarterback, he wasn’t “their guy.”
Last season, with Fitzpatrick gone, the sentiment was that Miami’s coaches and players wanted to see Tagovailoa come out of his shell, and for whatever reason it didn’t happen.
A perfect example of this was the team’s vote for captains before the start of the 2021 regular season.
Each candidate was asked to give a speech about their desire, and willingness to serve as team captains. According to multiple sources, when it was Tagovailoa’s turn to stand in front his teammates to make his pitch he basically encouraged them to vote for someone else, supposedly telling the room no matter what he’d remain a leader, then abruptly sitting down.
It wasn’t exactly the inspiring speech his teammates needed, or wanted. Many players concluded that Tagovailoa didn’t want the job, the responsibility, possibly because it meant having more interaction with Flores, whom he was developing a frosty relationship with, which would contribute to Flores’ dismissal.
So Mack Hollins and Jesse Davis were voted the offensive captains and Tagovailoa was one of a handful of NFL starting quarterbacks who didn’t have a captain’s “C” on his chest.
Tagovailoa has been made aware of the issues that make his teammates nervous about their quarterback, and he’s supposedly making more of an effort to address it.
Having new teammates, many of whom are leaders themselves, provided him somewhat of a blank slate.
The Dolphins coaching staff and his teammates have intentionally spent the entire offseason working to build Tagovailoa’s confidence and encouraging him to come out his shell.
“You’re going to have people talking about how you’re not performing and guess what? No one cares. It’s about leading,” new Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said when discussing the quarterback position last week. “I think, his teammates have really noticed a difference in him. He’s opening up. He’s coming into his own in that regard and he’s been unbelievably coachable.
“He’s let his guard down and we’ve been able to keep his confidence high, which it should be right now for sure, while correcting and getting his game better, which is the ultimate goal for everyone.”