Tua Tagovailoa – December 4, 2024
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Wednesday, December 4, 2024
QB Tua Tagovailoa
(Obviously you don’t play Aaron Rodgers, but what’s it going to be like being across from him, playing a team that he’s on considering how much he’s accomplished throughout his career?) – “I would say first off, a lot of respect to Aaron (Rodgers) and what he’s done throughout the course of his years playing at Green Bay. Obviously, we got to play against him two years ago, and he’s a Hall of Famer. Whether he looks like the same way he did in years past or not, you’re just going up against greatness regardless. The mindset that he has and to be able to still play at his age is really remarkable, and I’ve got a lot of respect for his game with how he goes about his business and how he does his things. I’ve got a lot of respect for him.”
(Does it feel like this matchup was a long time coming? It was so long ago that he went there and then missed last year and you face him for the first time late this year, so it’s been like I don’t know how many months-) – “Yeah, it’s been a long time coming but it’s super cool. I’m excited to see him go out there and have fun with his guys and play. Hopefully they don’t do too good against our guys, but we’re going to come out there and we’re going to compete as well and just admire good football if he goes out there and does his thing.”
(I think Aaron Rodgers turned 41 this week. Can you imagine yourself at age 41 still in the NFL?) – “I don’t know. I don’t know, that’s a long way to go for me. That’s a long way to go for me, so I’ll take it one year at a time – 26 feels good right now.”
(I’m sure you’ve heard the questions and concerns about this team’s toughness. As one of the leaders, how do you respond to people saying that this team is not tough mentally, physically, can’t handle the cold?) – “I would say that comes more from an individual in the way that I look at it. It comes from individuals and collectively you’ve got to all have that same mindset, that’s why we have team football, that’s why you’re in team sports. I think you’ve got to look at it as are you mentally tough and are you physically tough, they have to go hand in hand. If one of those things has a kink in it, it could go one way or the other. That’s what I would say with that.”
(How did you assess your game personally in the cold? Are there some positives that you can take away for the next time you’ll be in those environments?) – “There’s positives and there’s negatives, especially when you lose. There’s things that you wish you could have had back in that game, and there’s things that we just needed to clean up and be better with and more crisp.”
(You’re not new to the idea of people having a lot to say about you, whether it’s your play, the team you’re on or whatever. With some of the narratives, as Head Coach Mike McDaniel calls it, do you or the team feel like you have something to prove?) – “I think we as a team, as a collective team, we think we always have something to prove. Whether things are going right or things are not going right, everyone is going to have something to say whether you’re doing good or whether you’re not doing good. Sometimes guys read into it and they read too much into it and you can get it. And it goes both ways, right? Whether you lose and then you go down the rabbit hole of trying to respond to people, or when you win and you buy into what everybody is telling you and what not. I feel like that’s something that – around the league, it’s not just us – that is something that will forever be a battle for a lot of the guys playing in professional sports.”
(How surprised are you this team is 5-7?) – “Very surprised. I don’t think that shows the character of who we are as a team. It doesn’t show the work that we’ve put in this offseason together. Nobody else will say it but me, and I feel like this has a lot to do with myself obviously putting myself in harm’s way in the second game, going down – basically leaving my guys out to dry, that’s what I would say. Anyone can have an opinion about, ‘It’s football. It’s this, it’s that.’ I do take heart to that as well and still don’t want to do that to my guys again.”
(Speaking of which, there was obviously a play that got a lot of attention this past weekend with Trevor Lawrence. When you saw that play, you thought what?) – “Well I actually heard from a couple teammates what had happened and they were having conversations about it, then I went and looked at the play, that was crazy. I thought that was crazy. He was giving himself up and defensive guy came and smoked him. Then again, I don’t know the reaction time with being a defender trying to go and make a play on a guy, so like I don’t know all the logistics with that but I felt like he did have time to sort of, even if he was going to launch, he could’ve launched out of the way knowing that Trevor was giving himself up. To that, I hope Trevor is doing OK. I hope his family is OK. I know that can take a toll on your family more than yourself sometimes, and I hope his wife is OK as well.”
(There was a comment that Tom Brady was suggesting that maybe there should be a penalty if quarterbacks slide too late, trying to take a look from the defender’s point of view. How do you weigh all of that? I’m sure it’s – things happen so fast, it’s got to be difficult.) – “Yeah, that’s what I would say too, it’s difficult, and I would say for the defender for sure because they’re trying not to give up as many yards as possible. So for them, it kind of goes against what they’re trying to do essentially. I’m glad I don’t make up the rules and I’m glad I’m not in any of those meetings to give my two cents or whatever. I’m glad those guys in the higher ups are going to be able to talk about that one.”
(On a lighter note, I wanted to ask you about Moana 2. I saw you took your teammates and a lot of the younger kids to the movie. My personal opinion is Moana is the best Disney movie because it’s educational about cultures. As somebody who is popular, infamous – you represent your culture, very popular to Samoan and Polynesian community. How important is that representation to you? Not just the movie, but knowing that an entire culture of people look up to me?) – “I think it’s really cool, and when you look at it, it’s so cool because maybe a lot of people don’t understand that it’s necessarily not one culture; it’s many different cultures sort of mixed into one. Now in Moana 2, you kind of see more of other cultures than you did in the first Moana where it kind of felt like it was more Samoan, more Tongan, you can see some Hawaiian in there. And then in Moana 2, you can see Māoris in there, you can see Fijians are in there as well. You can see a little bit if you know or if you can understand, and I thought that was cool. My personal opinion, I didn’t think the songs were as good as Moana 1. Maybe that’s a hot take. (laughter) But I thought the songs in the first Moana stuck more than the second one. Overall the kids enjoyed it, glad we got to get out with a couple of teammates and spend some time with their kids and their families.”
(How much is the tattoos and the things like that about representing who you are and having all those kids look up to you?) – “Yeah, it definitely is a representation of who you are and your ethnic background. Different meanings of symbolism and you can sort of tell, ‘Oh this guy is Māori because the way his tattoo looks. This guy is Tongan, this guy is Samoan.’ But yeah, they just all have different ethnic background meanings to them.”
(And what are you?) – “Samoan. And then Hawaiians have their own as well. They also had in Moana 2 a good amount of Hawaiian ordeals in there, too.”
