Tua Tagovailoa may never play another down for the Miami Dolphins. That is the hard truth fans need to realize, even if they are celebrating. What Miami and Mike McDaniel did when they benched the starting QB, however, was wrong, even if it was right.
Benching Tagovailoa needed to happen. We all know that. His play dating back to 2024 has been more inconsistent than at any other point in his football career. Tagovialoa hasn't taken the steps forward as a leader or as a quarterback; he has regressed.
After their loss to Pittsburgh, it was apparent that change was inevitable, but then the Dolphins did what they always do. What should have been an easy benching turned into a fiasco.
Mike McDaniel missed an opportunity to make the organization look a lot better than they are
McDaniel told reporters that in the team's mind, Quinn Ewers was the best quarterback to give them a chance at winning.
Tagovailoa briefly met with the media later in the day and said he was disappointed in his demotion.
Tagovailoa is not serving as the team's backup. No, he has been designated the emergency third quarterback. That, too, could have been perfectly acceptable.
The Dolphins failed in their delivery. There is no reason to send a message to Tagovailoa that he needs to clean up his game. That could have been said behind closed doors. Instead, McDaniel made it public. What he should have said was that, given the remaining schedule and the playoff picture, starting Ewers would give them evaluation time. McDaniel instead lit a match.
Simple, done, to the point, accurate, and the organization doesn't look like they just drove a truck over their quarterback. The organization won't spend the next three months being asked if Tagovailoa is being traded. Just a simple, "We believe it's time to evaluate Ewers in real game situations," says it all, publicly. Instead, that match lit the bridge on fire.
The Dolphins tend to go from letter "A" to letter "Z" without thinking about everything in between. It's all, or it's nothing. Especially with how Ewers has looked since becoming the starter, it would have been easy to say it was more about Ewers getting a chance than it was about being done with Tagovailoa.
It seems as though McDaniel is not sending a message to Tagovailoa as much as he is sending one to Stephen Ross. He wants to keep his job; winning will do that, so having the "best option" starting is a direct line of communication to the man in New York.
The Dolphins just put themselves in an interesting position. You have to wonder if the publicity of the "benching" will divide the team, and a quarterback who is set to count $99 million in dead cap space if released. You have to wonder if Tagovailoa wants to come back to Miami at all after being humiliated.
The saving grace in all of this is that Tagovailoa has been horrible all year. Every press conference started with "We have to play better, I have to play better." Yes, he does. This shouldn't have been a surprise, even to him. The delivery method, however, should have been handled a lot differently.