If you want to get a Miami Dolphins fan riled up these days, there’s a fairly good chance you can do so simply by bringing up the name ‘Deshaun Watson’. Many Dolphins fans have completely and fully bought into “the process” that Miami set forth on with the regime change in early 2019, one that coveted drafting a young quarterback and building around him with a slew of NFL Draft selections and free agency additions. And, to a certain degree, the faith is understandable. Tua Tagovailoa didn’t rewrite the rookie passing records in 2020, but he was 6-3 as a starter and showed some bright flashes of play between the Arizona game, the Kansas City game and the Los Angeles (Chargers) game. Tagovailoa was efficient against New England and also against Cincinnati, as well.
So it isn’t like the Dolphins should be in any rush to deviate from their initial plan.
But by simply acknowledging that Miami could make a change? The odds are the conversation won’t be well received, even for a quarterback as talented and productive as Watson. The latest outlet to tackle the prospect of a seismic shift for the Dolphins is NFL Network’s Good Morning Football, asking whether or not the Dolphins are “all-in” on Tagovailoa.
"My shock level if they do something at quarterback over the next few weeks, is gonna be very, very low." 👀
Do you believe the Dolphins are all-in on Tua? pic.twitter.com/R3ulUCzcTe
— GMFB (@gmfb) March 9, 2021
The conversation steered into Miami’s controversial decisions to sit Tagovailoa in the fourth quarter of close games against the Denver Broncos and the Las Vegas Raiders in the midst of a playoff push, with the argument being that if the Dolphins were truly “all-in” on Tagovailoa as a player, such moves would not have been made.
But the panel is fair throughout the four-minute discussion to acknowledge that Tagovailoa’s buildup to playing was mired in rehab and not in training and that the Dolphins are seemingly willing, able and ready to let veteran quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick walk this offseason to further commit to Tagovailoa.
As things currently stand, the Dolphins’ best opportunities to make a dramatic move will be over the next month and a half ahead of the 2021 NFL Draft at the end of April. If we’ve reached May without a change, the odds are quite high that Miami is, indeed, “all-in” on Tagovailoa.