Breaking Down the Dolphins' Continuing Tua Dilemma

Let's start by saying that Tua Tagovailoa is not the only reason the Miami Dolphins have gotten off to a disastrous start in the 2025 NFL season.

But Tagovailoa most definitely is among the reasons, and it's a really, really bad development for an organization that committed to him as its franchise quarterback a little more than a year ago.

Tagovailoa always has been a health risk for the Dolphins to a degree higher than just about any other quarterback in the NFL — and, yes, we can have a Joe Burrow debate at some point as it relates to his durability or lack thereof — but now his performance also has become an issue.

It's not that Tagovailoa has been bad this season — we'll leave the opener out of this because every single player on the roster was bad in that 33-8 abomination at Indianapolis — it's just that he hasn't been good enough. Worse, he has failed to deliver at crunch time each of the past two games.

And those situations are why quarterbacks get the big bucks.

And that's, of course, another issue the Dolphins have with Tagovailoa: the contract.

It's a contract that pretty much ties the Dolphins to Tagovailoa for at least the next two seasons unless they can find a trading partner or they're willing to digest the idea of moving on from him next offseason and eating a lot of guaranteed money and cap space in the process.

And you have to wonder what team would take on Tua's contract, which includes $54 million guaranteed in 2026, if the Dolphins are trading him because he's not performing up to standards.

Releasing Tagovailoa next offseason would move his 2026 cap number from $56.4 million to $67.4 million — and that's with a post-June 1 designation.

Sure, the Dolphins could decide to make that move anyway and do what Denver did with Russell Wilson, but it's not common practice around the NFL to eat that kind of contract.

TUA'S PERFORMANCE DIPPING

Ideally, Tagovailoa turns things around quickly and gives the Dolphins the kind of quarterbacking he did in large amounts during 2022 and 2023, when he led the NFL in passer rating one year and passing yards the next.

But it's not all about numbers because Tagovailoa led the NFL in completion percentage in 2024, and that season wasn't exactly a memorable one for the offense — even without discussing what things looked like with the sub-par crew of backups the Dolphins employed.

As the Dolphins try to get something going in this 2025 season — the next chance comes in the Monday night game of Week 4 against the New York Jets — they really need Tua to get cranking, both for the rest of this season and beyond.

But it won't be that simple.

There are factors at play here.

THE TUA LIMITATIONS

Even at his best, Tagovailoa always had certain limitations physically, such as marginal escapability and a below-average NFL arm.

But he always had quick-decision making, anticipation and accuracy to compensate.

So far this season, those things aren't nearly as apparent.

In fact, he looks like a different quarterback, one who is getting happy feet regularly at even the hint of pressure and who's been off target more often than we've seen.

To be sure, the Dolphins don't have the best offensive line in the NFL — and that was before the starting right side of James Daniels and Austin Jackson landed on IR — but it's also not the disaster show some would have you believe.

Tagovailoa looks like somebody who has little confidence in his offensive line and is also very concerned about taking a big hit, understandable, but not necessarily conducive to playing the kind of football that NFL quarterbacks simply must play in 2025.

NFL Network's Tom Pelissero painted a picture of one of the big issues for the Dolphins offense right now during an appearance on The Rich Eisen Show.

"There is not enough talked about with the hoops that Mike McDaniel has to jump through on a week-in, week-out basis to design a game plan for a quarterback who can't get hit," Pelissero said. "You can't have him holding the ball. You can't have him designed runs. You can't really run quarterback sneaks. We've seen some of in relative terms the least athletic quarterbacks in the NFL get exposed at times as runners. Tom Brady ran a pass route in a Super Bowl. It didn't end well, but they put that in the game plan. You can't do that with Tua. You can't run a naked bootleg. You're not going to run zone read with him just to keep people honest.

"If you watch the game (against Buffalo), whether it's he's not trusting the protection, whether it's he doesn't want to get hit, or he's been told don't get hit, he's not stepping up in the pocket when there's pressure, he's going out the back of the pocket and he's flushing left. And all those things combined make it really hard to produce on a week-in and week-out basis."

As Pelissero further explained, the limitations on the offense put even more pressure on being accurate, precise and on time.

And when those things falter, even just a bit, the result is negative. Sometimes, disastrous.

The late interception at Buffalo has been dissected ad nauseum, with arguments coming from every direction as to whether Tua made the right decision, whether the problem was with the play concept, whether he locked on intended receiver Jaylen Waddle too much, and we'll add the one thing not discussed that we noticed: the ball needed to get there basically the second Waddle turned to Tua, and that didn't come close to happening.

But that's a different story about a specific play.

DOLPHINS HAVE BEEN ALL IN ON TUA

It's the larger picture that's problematic for the Dolphins, who have been all in, all about Tua since McDaniel was hired as head coach in February 2022.

McDaniel was hired in part — maybe even mostly — to get the most out of Tua after he was the centerpiece of the team's rebuilding/tanking project that started in 2019, and Tua progressed enough that he was named the Pro Bowl starter for the 2023 season.

That season, Tagovailoa's first without missing games because of injuries, was enough to convince the Dolphins to show Tagovailoa the money and make a commitment to him instead of having him play on his fifth-year option.

Injuries were an issue again in 2024, but worse, Tagovailoa's performance began to dip with the almost complete disappearance of throws downfield. And the trend has continued early in the 2025 season.

At this point, it's fair to wonder whether Tagovailoa reached his peak as an NFL quarterback in that 2023 season, which was good but still wasn't good enough because the production wasn't there against the quality opponents on the Dolphins' schedule.

So now the Dolphins find themselves with a 2025 season that's almost already done in terms of playoff hopes and the dream of that elusive playoff victory, considering only four of 165 teams since 2000 have made the playoffs after starting 0-3.

And now they have to figure out where they go from here with Tua, both in 2025 and 2026, if not beyond that.

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