Tua Tagovailoa injury doesn’t make Miami Dolphins fans shy away
By Brian Miller
The Miami Dolphins are expected to go after a quarterback in next April’s draft and despite a season ending injury, Tua Tagovailoa is still at the top.
Last weekend Alabama lost quarterback Tua Tagovailoa for the remainder of the season. Tagovailoa broke his hip with two minutes left in the half in a game that Alabama was running away with. Now his future draft status is in question.
In question to anyone but a large amount of Dolphins fans.
Dolphins fans went from dejection to elation to dejection to elation over the course of the last month. Realizing that Miami’s two game winning streak had successfully ended a run at the first overall pick, fans began to wonder if Joe Burrow or Justin Herbert would be a good option.
Then Tagovailoa went down and Dolphins fans were suddenly dejected once again but when the medical report came back saying that he would see a 6-8 month recovery window and should return to health, they were elated once again. Perhaps, they mused, teams will view Tagovailoa as an injury prone college prospect that is too risky to spend an early pick on. Thus allowing him to fall to the Dolphins wherever they stand to pick.
The injury to Tagovailoa was serious but not serious enough to end his career as a football player. The prognosis for recovery is good and the Dolphins and every other team will have plenty of time to evaluate his progress in his recovery by the time the draft rolls around, five and a half months from now.
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Dolphins fans are either for or against Tagovailoa and there are very few in the middle. On social media, the inundation of Tagovailoa posts are incredible and annoying at the same time. It is a love affair the likes I haven’t seen in my 12 years of covering the team.
With this level of hype also comes the reality that there is no in between for Tua either. He either has to be generational top talent who takes his team to the Super Bowl, likely more than once, or he will never come close to the fervor being thrown around him. He has to win at the next level.
There is no indication that the Dolphins have interest or value him to any degree. Some will tell you they do, others will say they don’t. Tua is not a can’t miss prospect and he isn’t close to being one. Especially given his injury history the last two years. That being said, he has the intangibles that teams look for. He is productive, consistent, accurate, well liked, and a leader on and off the field. He checks off the boxes but the NFL is a different platform.
Regardless, his biggest knock is his health and as stated above, his hip injury has not turned many Dolphins fans off from drafting him. The question is has turned off the Dolphins or the Bengals or any other team that might be looking to add him next April?