Chasing Tua: He won’t work out this week but Alabama QB remains center of attention. ❚ NFL combine players to watch, sleepers and our overall and position rankings, Page 17
Forget the 40-yard dashes and short shuttles.
Forget the position drills and team interviews.
The most important thing that will happen at the NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis this week is the medical checks, and for the Detroit Lions, one doctor’s visit stands out above the rest.
Alabama quarterback Tua Tagovailoa is set to be examined by the doctors for all 32 NFL teams, and how they feel about his hip – and to a lesser extent, his surgically repaired ankles – will go a long way toward determining how high he goes in April’s draft.
“With Tua, it’s just medical,” NFL Network analyst Daniel Jeremiah said in a teleconference last week. “His stock is not going to be impacted by what gets out in the media, because what gets out in the media is going to get out for a reason. So I don’t know that we’re going to know where that’s at. But I know that each individual team’s doctors are going to get a chance to see him and find out what’s going on there with the hip. And it’s just different. A hip is different than an ankle and a knee. That’s what, obviously for good reasons, concerns a lot of people. So your doctors get a chance to see where he’s at.”
Tagovailoa broke and dislocated his right hip in a November game against Mississippi State, leaving his draft stock in flux.
He won’t work out for teams this week and might not until April, but if teams are satisfied that his hip is healing fine and he’ll be able to have a long NFL career, he still should be a topfive pick.
The Lions, with the third pick of the draft, are in prime position to control where Tagovailoa ends up.
LSU quarterback Joe Burrow is expected to go No. 1 to the Cincinnati Bengals and Ohio State defensive end Chase Young is the favorite to go No. 2 to Washington. The Lions could draft Tagovailoa at No. 3 to apprentice under Matthew Stafford or trade their pick to a quarterback-needy team like the Miami Dolphins (No. 5), Los Angeles Chargers (No. 6) or Carolina Panthers (No. 7).
Tagovailoa is about three months removed from surgery and almost certainly will be called back for the medical rechecks in April.
But as long as he’s headed down the right path, trade talks can commence.
“I’m sure teams will want to bring him in and even look at him more there,” Jeremiah said. “So that information I’ll be surprised. The only reason that information will get out is if a team wants to get it out, hoping that somehow he would end up dropping. So that’s going to be interesting to see what happens with him on the medical front. I don’t anticipate we’ll get many answers there.”