The training camp performance of QB Tua Tagoaviloa is enough to inject excitement into just about any Dolphins fan. But the fans aren’t the only ones getting excited — some of the defensive teammates that Tagovailoa is slinging the ball around against met with the South Florida media yesterday and expressed their own excitement for the second-year quarterback’s approach this year.
Nik Needham has been with this Dolphins regime his entire career. He was highly complementary of Tagovailoa.
“He’s letting it fly this year, for sure. He was last year, but you can see he just looks a little more comfortable back there. He’s making some tough throws, putting it in the hole, leading receivers. The one he threw to Rob (Foster) yesterday on the little out-and-up. He threw it in a nice little pocket, so that was nice. Yes sir,” said Needham.
But the most damning assessment of the 2020 offense under Tua and, alternatively, the growth this offseason came from Eric Rowe. Rowe has been around the block a few times; he was drafted to Philadelphia and enjoyed some success in New England before settling in with the Dolphins. And he offered a pretty pointed assessment of how Miami’s offense operated last season when discussing Tagovailoa yesterday.
“Tua, I think he’s making that jump. I see each day he’s getting better from the first day, so now opposing defenses can’t just double one guy and be like, ‘okay everyone else is going to be covered.’,” said Rowe.
“He’s always had accuracy. That was never a problem. He’s always had accuracy, he’s always had the zip, he’s always had power. I just believe it’s that year-two jump everybody needs to make from their rookie year. Obviously, the type of offense. Last year, I even noticed his playbook was condensed to slants and bubbles. They really wouldn’t let him show his arm and now seeing in training camp, he’s got a lot more deep routes, they’re allowing him the opportunity to throw it deep.”
That’s what the team needs and it is certainly what the team is getting in high doses on the year thus far based off of camp. Of course, Tagovailoa’s offense in 2020 was handcuffed by a poor fit with former offensive coordinator Chan Gailey but Tagovailoa himself took some of the ownership for the offense due to a lack of mastery of his playbook. That, in turn, cut down on what concepts and checks at the line Tagovailoa had at his disposal.
The next layer comes today when the pads come on — but even then we won’t gain a full appreciation of how far Tagovailoa has come until the team starts playing for keeps.
In the meantime, we’ll just need to take the word of the guys he’s been torching at practice.
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