What Options Do Dolphins Have With Tua?

What to do with Tua?

The Miami Dolphins are dealing with nothing but questions at the moment, including the status of their head coach, but just as significant is the major dilemma they're facing at quarterback.

That dilemma involves Tua Tagovailoa, his mediocre performance for most of this season, lowlighted by a brutal outing against the Cleveland Browns on Sunday, compounded by his highly problematic contract.

It's a bad situation for the Dolphins this year and next, regardless of who will be around to deal with it.

And there's really no great solution in sight because it's not like the Dolphins easily can move on from Tua because of the organization's decision to show him the money and agree that "the market is the market" in 2024, instead of having him play on his fifth-year option and then decide on his long-term contract status this past offseason.

But that ship has sailed, the Dolphins made their decision, and now they have to deal with the consequences.

And right now, the Dolphins have one of the lowest-rated passers in the NFL — not that passer rating is everything — who is very much part of the team's overall problems, much more so than he looks like a solution moving forward.

The Dolphins are paying Tua the kind of money you give to a quarterback who can help elevate the franchise or at least keep it competitive even when things around him aren't ideal. It's what Baker Mayfield is doing in Tampa Bay, while putting together an MVP-type season despite major injury issues on his offensive line and the wide receiver corps.

The Dolphins are going through challenges on offense, no doubt, with two of their starting offensive linemen on IR since Week 1, Tyreek Hill out for the season, and now Darren Waller sidelined with a pec injury that may or may not be season-ending.

All of that doesn't come close to justifying the kind of performance we saw from Tagovailoa against Cleveland when he posted a 24.1 passer rating and a 3.4 QB rating from ESPN's analytics department. A side note that should make no one around the Dolphins organization warm and fuzzy is that there have been two QB performances this season graded below 5 by ESPN, and they both belong to Tua (the other came in Week 1).

At the very least, Tagovailoa is aware he's not performing up to par or anywhere near what a franchise quarterback should.

“Definelty not happy, not proud of where I’m at with my play, with how I’ve gone about things this year," Tagovailoa said. "I know I have to be a lot better, and I’ve been better for the Miami Dolphins years past, but this isn’t years past, this is this year, right? Just trying to maneuver everything and trying to build a collection of guys to kind of bring along with me, and I have to be able to multi-task if that makes sense. To be able to do that, while continuing to get whatever it was last year and the years prior for myself to get going again. And get in that flow.” 

It's not just the stats where Tua has fallen short this season because his leadership has come into question, particularly after his infamous postgame comments after the loss against the Chargers in Week 6.

And maybe that's what Tua was referencing when he said he wasn't proud "with how I've gone about things this year."

The bottom line is that it has been a dramatic and painful regression for Tua, who, at the very least, stayed healthy so far in 2025.

And maybe he can turn things around starting Sunday when the Dolphins face the Atlanta Falcons.

COULD THE DOLPHINS ACTUALLY BENCH TUA?

But there are some former players who, now in their role as analysts, think the Dolphins should bench Tua.

It's a thought that might have some merit, but also has seemed unthinkable because of the investments the Dolphins have made in Tua from the time they hired Mike McDaniel, in large part to maximize their 2020 first-round pick after two forgettable seasons at the start of his NFL career.

McDaniel made an interesting comment after the poor performance in Cleveland suggesting there could be lineup changes coming for the Dolphins: "There’s a lot of guys that will have an important work week because if you are negatively affecting the football team routinely, I don’t have a choice but to assess a different player and I have to coach a lot better and we’re going to find out what we’re made of.”

Well, Tagovailoa has thrown three interceptions each of the past two games, though in fairness, the first of his three against the Chargers went through the hands of Jaylen Waddle.

But there was no excusing what happened in Cleveland, so is there a world where McDaniel actually would bench Tua and start Quinn Ewers instead?

Former New York Giants QB Danny Kanell and former Bills and Eagles running back LeSean McCoy both are in favor of the idea.

McCoy raised the point that Tua seems to be back where he was before McDaniel arrived and, perhaps as importantly, before Tyreek Hill joined the Dolphins to help give Miami perhaps the fastest skill position group in NFL history, which spread out defenses and maybe helped maximize Tua's point guard-like ability.

Remember that in 2020 and 2021, a lot of the rallying cries from Tua supporters centered around the need for better playmakers and a better offensive line around him, and to be fair, he did deliver strong numbers in 2022 and 2023.

But he regressed in 2024, even if his passer rating still was over 100, and his performance has taken another dip in 2025 to pre-McDaniel levels.

But, again, would McDaniel really bench him?

The Dolphins are pretty much tied to Tagovailoa through next season because of his contract, which calls for $54 million guaranteed with that cap number to go along. The idea of trading him sounds great, except finding another team willing to take on his contract seems dicey at best.

It's to the point where an NFL executive suggested to The Athletic that the Dolphins might want to consider throwing a team a draft pick to take on Tua's contract, like the Houston Texans did in trading Brock Osweiler to the Cleveland Browns in 2017. In that trade, Houston traded Osweiler, a second-round pick and a sixth-round pick to Cleveland for a fourth-round pick.

Osweiler wound up never playing a down for the Browns, instead signing with Denver in 2017 before joining the Dolphins in 2018.

But enough about Osweiler, this is about Tua.

McDaniel and Tua have been linked since 2022, but McDaniel almost assuredly is on his way out, so his priority right now should be to do whatever is in his power to produce the best results for as long as he remains the Dolphins' head coach.

So who gives him the best chance right now, Tua or Ewers?

The answer here probably remains Tua, even though his flaws as a quarterback are showing up more and more because Ewers sure looked a bit overmatched in his brief appearance against Cleveland.

What's better for the health of the franchise moving forward?

That's a tougher question, but there's nothing to suggest that Ewers looks like a viable option as the starter in 2026, since Tua probably still will be a better QB.

Whether the Dolphins want to swallow a hard pill and deal with the nasty cap ramifications that would come from moving on from Tua, the way Denver did with Russell Wilson in 2024, probably will be a question for the next regime.

In the meantime, Tagovailoa figures to remain the starting QB, even if the idea of benching him maybe has a lot of merit.

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