‘Not the savior.’ Tua Tagovailoa’s return doesn’t solve Dolphins’ other offensive issues

Both Tua Tavovoa and coach Mike McDaniel shared the same sentiment when it came to the franchise quarterback’s return.

“I don’t think, for myself, I put any pressure on myself coming back and having to save the team,” Tagovailoa said, latter adding that the team has to “look at ourselves and see what we can do to get better moving forward.”

“It’s important to state — what I just finished talking to the team about is that he’s not the savior either,” McDaniel said. “There’s a lot of things that have to be looked at from an individual’s game, and all three phases to get better because it’s not ‘All right, Tua is here, he’s going to fix the issues.’ Everyone has to be on board to do their part to getting results that we want.”

The underlying message: the Miami Dolphins offense must fix their other issues in order for Tagovailoa’s return to really mean something. Sure, the running game that produced a lackluster 81 yards in the season opener has improved following back-to-back performances of more than 150 yards against the New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts. Still, the Dolphins’ inability to get Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle involved against the Colts and the consistent mental mistakes are a bit concerning.

Tagovailoa, of course, should help solve the former. Even with the seemingly increased number of two-high safety sets the offense has seen, his return will certainly be an improvement over Skylar Thompson, Tim Boyle and Tyler Huntley, each of whom bear some responsibility for the Dolphins being the worst-scoring team in the league. The franchise quarterback acknowledged the difficulty that comes along with trying to master an offense tha has been tailored Tagovailoa’s skill set during the past two seasons.

“I think it’s really tough to ask any of our quarterbacks to come in to do the footwork that we’ve been doing for the past two years, to see fast guys running and seeing the space that’s there and asking them to kind of process all of that,” Tagovailoa said. “We looked at film, we were able to see what we missed and what we could’ve got better with, but it’s a team sport. It shouldn’t take one position for this whole thing to crumble, everybody needs to be on their Ps and Qs as well.”

And while the potential emergence of Jonnu Smith as a reliable third receiving threat bodes well for the passing game, the offense must not totally abandon a rushing attack that has looked dominant as of late. Two costly fumbles against the Colts — one deep in their own territory and another in the red zone — left at least two scores on the board. Throw in the four offensive penalties, one of which cost Raheem Mostert a 32-yard run that would’ve put the Dolphins in field goal range, and McDaniel’s frustration immediately following the 16-10 loss to the Colts makes sense.

“I’m very frustrated because you think you emphasize things correctly, and you think you have certain things fixed, and when they’re not, it’s not going to be anybody else’s fault but me,” McDaniel said in Sunday’s postgame news conference. “I was definitely wrong. And you have to approach it that way. We have retooled stuff to clean up our game with the penalties and it’s still killing us. I need to figure out something better.”

Will Tagovailoa’s return fix the mental mistakes? That remains to be seen. The Dolphins had five offensive penalties against the Jacksonville Jaguars and another three against the Buffalo Bills before Tagovailoa’s injury. Unfortunately, most of the penalties were along the offensive line — a unit that, despite its propensity for mental mistakes, has been one of the more consistent groups in terms of availability. As Terron Armstead said prior to the Colts loss, the unit would have to fix the small mistakes to maximize their success.

“We’re progressing,” Armstead said Friday. “I think the thing that we need to do more as an offensive line and as far as our consistency is eliminate the negatives, the penalties, the [mental errors]. As long as we can eliminate those or minimize those, our production has been there on film.”

As much as Tagovailoa’s presence will help the offense, quarterback was far from the only reason that the Dolphins currently find themselves ranked 10th in the AFC with a record of 2-4. A lot will have to change between now and Sunday for the Dolphins to beat the Arizona Cardinals.