Tua Tagovailoa, Miami Dolphins might be for real

Under the leadership of new head coach Mike McDaniel, the Miami Dolphins are fun to watch and quarterback Tua Tagovailoa looks reborn.

Video Transcript

VOCH LOMBARDI: What's up, y'all? It's Voch Lombardi. Watch every second of the NFL season when and where you want it, only on The Zone.

Tua Tagovailoa is going to owe Mike McDaniel some money, man. And I don't know what it is about these coaches that are in their 30s that come from these other coaching trees by these coaches that are in their 30s. I don't know, but they just go to these teams and they just flip them and they just turn into a totally different team.

Now Tua Tagovailoa was around and be in the Brian Flores era, right? Which is actually-- Brian Flores is a defensive-minded coach. He came from that Belichick tree. And to be fair, when he was the head coach, the Miami Dolphins defense did look better. And how these teams typically are put together is that if you're a genius on defense, you're typically not a genius on offense, right?

So Brian Flores' offenses were at a, I would say, talent deficiency, right? Let's just say that. Or a talent and scheme deficiency. But the defense was cool. And typically what they do to kind of like make up for that lack of talent and offensive play callers is they just get a veteran quarterback. That was Ryan Fitzpatrick.

So everybody was kind of scratching their head, like why is Ryan Fitzpatrick starting over Tua Tagovailoa right now? What's the deal? Tua Tagovailoa is supposed to be the future. But Ryan Fitzpatrick went out there and he did veteran things with this good defense in his run game that Brian Flores brought to us.

And hey, here we go. Here are your new Miami Dolphins. And we're-- and look, when I say new Miami Dolphins, I mean, hey, they're good now. But they were once horrific, right? So that is improvement, to be fair. Brian Flores is fired, perfect. Now we have Mike McDaniels coming from the San Francisco 49ers quarterback tree.

So of course, they're going to do some fancy schmancy things on offense. And you sign a Tyreek Hill, you draft a Jaylen Waddle, you bring in this offensive-minded coach in Mike McDaniels. You get a couple of running backs. That's exactly what we do in San Francisco. We just got a couple of running backs and we use them all.

And now all of a sudden, Tua Tagovailoa looks a little different, doesn't he? So last week, I felt like the Dolphins going into the Ravens game, I felt like this was going to be a pretty good test for them, right? The Dolphins, a emerging good team, versus the Ravens, who are a good team.

If I would have told you that Lamar Jackson went absolutely crazy this game. If I were to say Lamar Jackson was 21 for 29, 318 passing yards, three touchdowns with a rushing day of nine carries, 119 yards and one touchdown, you would have not thought that the Dolphins would have won this game.

But damn, Tua Tagovailoa threw the ball 50 times, 36 completions, six touchdowns. Two interceptions, of course, and he had one carry for one yard. Now listen, Tua Tagovailoa was almost written off as a bust. Coming out of the draft process, he was one of those guys, though.

I mean, there are a lot of there are a lot of people comparing Tua Tagovailoa to like Drew Brees. You know, he was going to be one of those dissect you guys, and all that started with the height that he got from that Georgia game his freshman year. That one drive, that second half, I believe, that Tua Tagovailoa came in and just kind of tore it up.

Won a ring with him. And Tua Tagovailoa's NFL career, as of this point, people were ready to write him off as a bust. But Tua is a quarterback, a young quarterback, a rookie to sophomore quarterback in this system and he kind of got hurt with this older fashioned, defensive minded team.

This head coach with this older quarterback also, right? Tua Tagovailoa was not going to thrive under Brian Flores. But you take this young fancy schmancy offensive play caller in Mike McDaniels, you turn that dude into the head coach and Tua Tagovailoa all of a sudden has a new lease on life.

He has a brand new career that he can be proud of. It's only been two games. I'm not getting carried away here. But I do think the future for Tua Tagovailoa is much better than the past for him. And if you have a good future at quarterback in the National Football League, that means you get paid. It's almost time to have that conversation.

If Tua Tagovailoa is going to-- if he's going to be a franchise quarterback and you're going to pay him as such, Tua needs to give half that money to Mike McDaniels.