Teddy Bridgewater needs to be on a short leash Sunday

I posed Saturday what would the Miami Dolphins do if Tua Tagovailoa somehow got cleared to play on Sunday by passing all the concussion protocol tests. Well, that decision will never have to happen and Teddy Bridgewater gets the start.

This is what’s best for Tua. Take as much time as you need to heal up and when you’re like 110% ready to play, come back and play.

In the meantime, the Miami Dolphins head to New Jersey to play the New York Jets. We already know who will be the starting quarterback for the Dolphins and that will be Teddy Bridgewater.

Teddy Bridgewater was brought in, specifically, to be Tua’s backup. He’s getting paid good backup money to be that solid player that can come in and steady the wheel.

When he came in last week against the Bengals, Teddy Bridgewater looked like Teddy Bridgewater which is to say he looks like a guy with two hands firmly on the wheel who is afraid to take one hand off to turn the music up.

He threw that bomb to Tyreek Hill, which was a throw Tua can’t make. It was quite nice. The Dolphins didn’t score after that catch even though they were inside the four-yard line.

Overall though, I saw a quarterback with skittish feet, who was looking to check it down almost immediately after getting the ball. I saw a quarterback almost run into the running back when he was running play-action who also wasn’t on the same page with his receivers like the INT he threw that probably wasn’t an INT that was never challenged by the booth.

Now, that could have been the case because Teddy wasn’t getting that many first-team reps leading into Thursday or at all throughout the beginning of the season. I can buy that.

What I am also buying is that Teddy Bridgewater needs to be on a pretty tight leash.

My reasoning for this is mainly because I believe, without being at practices watching him perform and strictly basing this off his legendary preseason performance that Skylar Thompson isn’t worse than Teddy Bridgewater.

Folks want to point out Teddy’s record when he filled in for Drew Brees back in 2019. Go ahead and look those up right here. Here are the highlights of those stats;

• 5-0 as a starter. Not sure where you fall on the whole are wins a QB stat or not
• 9/2 TD/INT ratio, not the worst, not the best
• 99.1 QB rating which would rank him around the middle of the league
• 50.9 QBR
• 67.9 Completion percentage which is rough
• 153 yards per game- Holy smokes that stinks

Feel free to look at his numbers from last year when he started 14 games for the decently talented Denver Broncos.

That Saints’ team, when he revitalized his career, was a very good team with a ton of talent. Do you know what other team has a ton of talent on it? The 2022 Miami Dolphins.

That’s one of the reasons I think Teddy Bridgewater needs to have keys taken off of him if keeps the car in cruise control(man alive how many car puns can I make in one article?). This offense is built like a Ferrari that’s been stuffed into a Corvette. It’s made to go hard and to put up points. It’s not meant to meander around and let the defense take care of the team.

My feeling is that Teddy will, ultimately, take care of the ball and not put it in harm’s way but because of that will leave too many plays on the field thus putting too much pressure on the defense.

I don’t think the Skylark, Skylar Thompson, will do that. I really, truly don’t. I watched that kid sling the ball in the preseason. I watched him put the ball where ever he damn well pleased and I saw him do it with no fear. I saw him throw rope after rope over cornerbacks’ heads and I saw him throw with touch over linebackers’ heads in front of safeties. I saw him navigate muddy pockets and throw darts to the proper shoulder of players while defenders were bearing down on him. I saw all that and the man kept coming after defenses.

I don’t care that Skylar Thompson was a 7th round pick. If you didn’t know Kenny Pickett was a 1st rounder you would have no idea he wasn’t a 7th rounder because Skylar played better than him against the same kind of competition for the same amount of games.

Skylar also had a fire to him that the other players appreciated. I’m not saying the team won’t respond to Teddy Bridgewater, I’m saying that Skylar already has it.

You start Teddy Bridgewater because that’s what the money is for. You see if he can go out other and not just not crash the car but make it hum. But if in the first half against the New York Jets, if Teddy is missing the mark on throws and the offense looks like a Brian Flores offense, then he needs to be shown the bench and Skylar Thompson needs to be put in the lineup.

Here are Skylar Thompson’s highlights from the preseason in case you want to relive it.

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