Tua Tagovailoa has had two head coaches during his time with the Miami Dolphins, and he says the style and approach of those two coaches couldn't be more different.
In an interview with "The Dan Le Batard Show" that aired on Monday, Tagovailoa got candid about playing under Brian Flores versus Mike McDaniel. The No. 5 overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft said he began to believe he didn't belong during his two seasons under Flores, while McDaniel has made him feel right at home.
“Well, to put it in simplest terms, if you woke up every morning and I told you, ‘You suck at what you did, that you don’t belong doing what you do, that you shouldn’t be here, that this guy should be here, that you haven’t earned this,'” Tagovailoa said. “And then you have somebody else come in and tell you, ‘Dude, you are the best fit for this, like you are accurate, you are the best whatever. You are this, you are that.’ Like how would it make you feel listening to one or the other?”
Flores coached the Dolphins from 2019 to 2021 before he was fired in January 2022 and subsequently replaced by McDaniel, who has led the team to consecutive playoff appearances for the first time in more than two decades.
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Tagovailoa made his debut in Flores' second season with the team, and he went on to throw for 1,814 yards, 11 touchdowns and five interceptions across 10 games in his rookie campaign. In two of those games, he was replaced by veteran backup Ryan Fitzpatrick in the fourth quarter.
He went on to throw for 2,653 yards, 16 touchdowns and 10 picks over 13 games the following season, and he says the criticism he received across his first two years under Flores took a toll on his confidence.
“You hear it more and more, you start to believe that,” he said. “I don't care who you are. You could be the president of the United States, you have a terrible person telling you things that you don't want to hear or probably shouldn't be hearing, you're going to start believing that about yourself. And so that's what sort of ended up happening.
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“It was, it's basically been what two years of training that out of not just me but a couple of guys as well that have been here my rookie year all the way until now.”
Tagovailoa and the Dolphins' offense has taken off under McDaniel. The QB threw for a league-leading 4,624 passing yards in 2023 and earned his first Pro Bowl nod while mixing in 29 passing touchdowns and 14 interceptions. The Dolphins went on to reward him last month with a four-year, $212.4 million contract that ranks among the richest in the NFL.
