Shaunodon said:
Update:
Question is still there if anyone wants to answer. Dolphins just became very interesting. |
I don't know if you'll see a meteoric increase in Dolphins productivity right away. Not from what his own teammates are saying anyway:
"According to Dolphins players who spoke on the condition of anonymity, Tagovailoa was doing “alright” in practices. He wasn’t disappointing, but his weekly reps weren’t eye-opening, indicating that a change was needed.
One offensive player guessed that Tagovailoa had a mastery of about 40% of the offense.
“It’s not bad, but he’s not Fitz,” the player said.
However, when running Miami’s scout team offense — practicing against Miami’s first-team defense — Tagovailoa apparently has had a habit of holding onto the ball too long.
That’s the main criticism that Alabama coach Nick Saban had about his finest quarterback prospect, and a defensive player expressed concern that “he can get hurt playing like that. This is the NFL! These boys are big, fast and hungry. He’s out there looking like a snack.”
It doesn’t help that the first defense Tagovailoa will face happens to feature Aaron Donald, a quarterback-eating defensive lineman. The Los Angeles Rams have the best defensive front Miami’s developing, but far-from-polished offensive line will face all season.
And now they must protect a rookie quarterback, running what will likely be an evolving offense that suits Tagovailoa, who is playing with a hip that was surgically repaired nearly 12 months ago."
Dolphins players wonder why QB change was made now
I think of it as a similar situation to how Eli Manning started his career. The Giants had brought in Kurt Warner as the starter in 2004 while Eli learned the offense. Warner was 5-4 and playing well when Tom Coughlin benched him to turn the reigns over to their rookie QB. The Giants proceeded to finish the season 2-7 under Manning. But, Eli learned and developed over that time and went 11-5 the year after. Sometimes coaches make that mid-season change in order to jumpstart a rookie QB's development, not because they expect to have immediate divisional contention aspirations.
Which is what infuriates me about how Mike Tomlin handled Ben Roethlisberger's injury last year. He turned the team over to 2nd year QB Mason Rudolph with the perfect opportunity to develop the team's potential future starter. Then, at the end of November, after one (extremely) bad game, he benches Rudolph for Devlin Hodges. And of course, three weeks later, after Hodges also had one (extremely) bad game, Tomlin yanked him out and went back to Rudolph, at which point Rudolph got injured and Hodges finished the final game and a half of the season. This QB carousel was solely focused on remaining in contention for the season at hand, with no eye on developing for the team's future. When asked about the possibility of Big Ben retiring years ago, Tomlin answered "we've been preparing for that for some time." Meanwhile, the #2 QB on the depth chart at the time Tomlin said that (Landry Jones) isn't even on the team anymore (for good reason, I never saw him as the future of the franchise, which is why Tomlin's statement is even more bs).
Anyway, I think it will be good for Tua's development to jump in now. But, I would temper your expectations on what it means for the Dolphins this year.
