Tua Tagovailoa and the Miami Dolphins fell flat against the Kansas City Chiefs Saturday night. Miami fell 26-7 on the road in the AFC Wild Card and saw their season end.
Tagovailoa had the best year, statistically, of his career, but the Dolphins lost to the Buffalo Bills last week to miss out on the AFC East. Then, Tagovailoa and the offense mustered just seven points against the Chiefs.
Going into a contract year, Tagovailoa doesn’t feel any pressure about his future with the organization.
“I don’t feel any pressure at all,” Tagovailoa said, via Jordan McPherson of the Miami Herald. “I have full trust in myself. I have full trust in what I’m capable of doing for our organization. Outside of that we’re focusing on tonight and what happened. We’re going to simmer on this and see what we can do to get better from it going into next year.”
Tagovailoa finished the game 20-of-39 passing for 199 yards, one touchdown and one interception. The Dolphins only scored in the second quarter while the Chiefs were able to meticulously move the football despite the cold weather.
There was an emphasis on cold weather, considering the temperature was in the negatives.
As far as the game, Tagovailoa cited communication issues.
“As the leader of that offense, it really started with practices,” Tagovailoa said. “That’s how we should’ve got things going, was in practice, with the communication, knowing where we should be going in this loud environment. Those miscues lead to delay of games. We can’t change the protection because we don’t have enough time, things like that. It was communication errors …
“I would say just being efficient on first and second down. That’s what I would say to that. Like I said, there has been some communication errors and things like that. We can’t do that.”
For an offense that worked so well all season long, it came up empty over the last two weeks. Now, there will be questions on where to improve for 2024 and making a deeper playoff run.
Tagovailoa will be back, barring anything unforeseen. But there’s no doubt he’ll have to improve to elevate the rest of the offense.
Tagovailoa finished the season with 4,624 yards, 29 touchdowns, 14 interceptions and a 69.3% completion percentage. He has 81 touchdown passes to his name, but Year 5 will be critical next fall and there will surely be pressure, regardless of what he says.
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