Tua Tagovailoa has had quite an up and down career. The former number five overall draft pick has been questioned heavily since entering the league. With an entirely different coaching staff taking over the franchise, there have been concerns regarding his future. Their new quarterbacks coach and passing game coordinator Darrell Bevell put those rumors to rest for now.
Bevell said, “The first thing is to get him ingrained in the system. Once we are able to do that, then I think the system is going to be built and tailored to him and bring out all the positives in his game.” If you want to know how established Bevell is at his job, he worked with players like Matthew Stafford, Russell Wilson and recently Trevor Lawrence. He knows very well what works and what doesn’t.
Bevell Expressed Thoughts on Tua Tagovailoa
Bevell also made it clear what he believes Tua does best when he’s out on the field. He said, “It’s important to tailor the game to them, to their talent, rather than fitting the round peg in the square hole. We can tailor the offense to bring out the strengths of each guy. I think he’s a really accurate passer. That’s the thing that jumped out at me right away is looking at him. I haven’t done like a complete deep dive yet. But I’ve looked at enough tape that I like the accuracy that he has. I like the ability to make some off-schedule plays. He can get outside the pocket. He’s not going to be a major runner, but he can run and make plays with his feet.”
“I think it’s important for me to be able to see the ball coming out of his hand in person. I can see it on tape. There are questions that I have. But I want to see the ball come out of his hand in person. That’s the one thing for me, always on tape, is it’s hard to tell the true velocity, so I want to get him out here on the grass and see exactly what it looks like. From what I’ve seen we’ll definitely be able to have high success from him being able to throw the football. He can make many of the throws that we’re going to ask him to do. And the ones that he can’t then we’re going to do something different.”
Dolphins Plan to Improve Across the Board
Miami has plans to perform a whole better straight from the start this time around. They had a ridiculously horrid start last year before rattling off multiple wins in a row to miss the playoffs by a few games. Head coach Mike McDaniel is expected to bring in a Kyle Shanahan type of offensive scheme. Something that could work well with Tagovailoa considering his strengths.
The last thing that Bevell talked about happens to be the run game. The Dolphins had a serious lack of depth at the position. They weren’t successful at all in that area of the field. When questioned about it, he said “Any time you run the football, that’s a quarterback’s best friend. It opens up so much when you turn around and hand the ball to the quarterback it takes a lot of pressure off of you. But then it affects the defense in a positive way when you can play-fake them and distort the defense.”
So far it seems like this is definitely going to be a make-or-break season for Tua Tagovailoa in Miami. If he performs well with his new scheme, he is likely to be retained. However, if he flounders again here, the Dolphins will be looking to start over. Both sides are certainly hoping that it doesn’t get to that point.
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