Miami Dolphins will bench many starters Sunday including Tua Tagovailoa

The Miami Dolphins will not play Tua Tagovailoa on Sunday to wrap their pre-season schedule against the Bengals. In fact, many starters will not play. Is that a smart move for a team that is young and still relatively inexperienced?

The case of Tagovailoa is interesting. He has a decent first preseason game and a much better outing in week two but sitting him or the final game, which will be followed by a two-week game break before the season begins seems odd.

Earlier this week I mentioned that it would be perfectly fine to sit Tua this week but I still would have expected at least one series.

Let’s face one fact, Tua Tagovailoa has a long way to go before he should be getting this type of veteran waiver. The Dolphins are, of course, protecting him but should they be is a question that some are asking. Risking your starting QB for a meaningless preseason game doesn’t really make sense and if Tua had a few more years under his belt, I might agree.

Tua needs to get some work in against other teams even if for only one or two series.

With Tua now out, his next action will come in the regular season against the Patriots in Foxboro to kick off the 2021 season.

Flores spoke to the media on Thursday and was asked about these starters but this also raised some interesting information as well. Like the group of receivers that might be playing.

"“Tua won’t play on Sunday and we’ll probably rest of most of the starters,” Brian Flores"

Flores was asked about the receivers who are now back at practices.

"“Fuller, Parker – I don’t have this in front of me – so I believe Fuller will be out there. Parker will be out there. Again, with all these guys, some are modified. I don’t have this in front of me.”"

It will be interesting to see exactly how many snaps each of those guys play and if I were a betting man, I would put that number on one hand. Given the tendency of both Parker and Fuller being banged up, I wouldn’t expect to see anything more than a couple of routes and then a spot on the bench.

Sunday’s game will be at 4:00 in Cincinnati and will be televised live on CBS.