Tua Tagovailoa – December 9, 2020
Download PDF version
Wednesday, December 9, 2020
QB Tua Tagovailoa
(I wanted to give you an opportunity to shout out the offensive linemen, particularly the three rookies there. What did you think of the job they did and keeping you up this past Sunday, and I guess your thoughts on having three rookie offensive linemen there?) – “I think they were all chosen for a reason. I think the Miami Dolphins coaches, the GM (Chris Grier) and (Head) Coach (Brian) Flores, they made those decisions for a reason and I think they did a great job. Any time that you can come out of a game not getting sacked, I think that’s a really great job from the line up front. I think they’re all individually different. They’re all wired differently. They’re good at different things, but I think things are starting to come together for those guys up front. They’re starting to communicate a lot better, but it’s a day-to-day process with us offensively. We’ve just got to continue to work at what we need to to get the job the done and that’s what we’re going to do.”
(What comes to mind when you think of Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes?) – “Same agent. (laughter) We’ve got the same agent. (laughter) But when you think of Patrick, you just think of someone who’s very explosive, a generational talent. He can do it all – on the run, in the pocket, look right, throw it behind his head (laughter) – whatever you want, that guy’s got it. So all the respect in the world from me to him.”
(You had a rough couple weeks between the Broncos game and then your injury and when we talked to you last week, you seemed a little down. Maybe you were just focused on the task at hand. How are you doing? How is your confidence? How is your outlook and what did you learn from the adversity you overcame the last couple of weeks?) – “Adversity has always been in my life from high school, college, the injuries and then also in the NFL. I think that’s just life. I think last week I was a little ‘down’ because of the way I practiced and it just wasn’t to the standard that I wanted to practice. You just learn from those things and like I said before, it’s a continuous learning process in the NFL. You learn day-to-day and week-to-week. There’s always something new to learn because defenses are not going to stay the same. They’re going to be different and then you also can expect some nuances coming into this game, too.”
(Do you enter this game kind of feeling the need to keep pace with Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes and I wanted to ask you about the red zone. Do you think some hurry-up or lining up quickly in the red zone could probably help you guys a little bit moving forward as well?) – “I think we’re going to need to execute every time we go out there offensively. I don’t think we need to do anything new. We’ve just got to go out there and have all 11 guys playing together and being on the same page, really. We’ve just got to be able to go out there and execute, do that and in the red area, I know (Offensive Coordinator) Chan (Gailey) has something really good for us. But we’ve got to execute offensively. I believe we have the plays, just not executed the way we had done it in practice. It’s all about execution and you can only take it a play at a time and just don’t worry about anything else.”
(How much easier is your defense making your life with the way they’ve been playing?) – “I think the defense has a big part of our success as a team, too. They’ve done a tremendous job getting turnovers for us, putting us in great situations and then you also talk about our special teams. Our special teams does a great job of putting us in great situations and really it’s complementary football we’re playing out there. We’re just trying to play as a team and yeah, I’d say they definitely make it a lot easier for us.”
(I really appreciated that moment you had with G/T Robert Hunt earlier. It was good to see some laughter, some joy. It kind of reminded me of the locker room. I miss that. We’re not able to see a lot of those moments between the players that happen behind the scenes and I was thinking about how QB Ryan Fitzpatrick feels so comfortable in his assignment and his skin that he makes everyone around him feel comfortable. So my question is, in what ways are you feeling more comfortable? In what ways are you feeling more comfortable with your tasks and everything around you, having some starts under your belt and being near the end of your rookie season now?) – “I’d say I’m comfortable with what I’m given. Whatever plays that I’m given, I’m comfortable with them. Mind you, we talk about these things – me and (Offensive Coordinator) Chan (Gailey) – we talk about what I like, talk about what I don’t like. I have as much input as anyone else does in our quarterback room and that’s what makes me that much comfortable to tell Chan, ‘hey, can we run this or can we not run this?’ So yeah, I would say I’m pretty comfortable with what I’m given.”
(A few minutes ago, we were talking with Chiefs Head Coach Andy Reid and he was talking about some of the unconventional throws that Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes is able to pull off and he said something interesting about that. He saw it as something that would inspire other quarterbacks to try that and I’m wondering how confident are you in your ability to throw those sidearm throws and some of those others, and how would you feel about throwing passes with your right hand?) – “I’m not too sure. I don’t practice like any of those really. (laughter) So really, if I have to make a throw sidearm, then I guess that’s how it’ll happen in the game. Things just happen so fast in the game. You almost have no time to think; you’ve just got to react a lot of the times. But yeah, that’s what I have to say about that.”
(We talked I guess after the game about tempo and what you guys said there. I watched the game back and saw you guys did more empty formations as well. I’m curious what about those two packages make you comfortable as a quarterback – the tempo and the empty?) – “I think it helps just to kind of see the defense a little bit and see what the defense is going to give us – if they want to blitz or if they’re checking out of a blitz into coverage. I think that helps. I think that’s the biggest thing, really indicator formations.”
