You’ve heard plenty this offseason from what just about everyone on the outside of the NFL thinks of Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. There’s been plenty of criticism and optimism alike, depending on where you look. But getting some opinions from those inside the league is a great way to get a different gauge on the Tagovailoa experience in Miami — and thanks to ‘The Cris Collinsworth Podcast featuring Richard Sherman‘, we now have a sense of how one prominent Buffalo Bills defender feels about Miami’s second-year quarterback.
Tre’Davious White joined the podcast this week to discuss a slew of topics but the conversation turned quite interesting for Dolphins fans upon the discussion about the Dolphins’ quarterback situation. White offered a significant level of praise and optimism for not just Tagovailoa, but also the Dolphins’ rebuilding effort as a whole. Things got kicked off when Collinsworth asked White if he felt the Dolphins could take a quarterback at No. 6 overall.
“I don’t think so. I just feel like they have so much confidence in Tua. You know, go back to last year even when Fitz (Ryan Fitzpatrick) was coming in and relieving him and winning games, the next week they always go back to Tua. They got their guy. I think that they’re gonna give him the whole year of just, you know, the whole offseason to get more comfortable and do his thing,” said White.
“Like you said, Miami has a nice team. How they orchestrated things, they have a nice defense, they got a lot of pieces on the outside — they just added Will Fuller, a fast guy, they have DeVante Parker over there and he’s going to catch the 50/50 balls, too…he has the weapons and I think that it’s just going to take him getting comfortable. We all know what he can do, what he did at Alabama the last three years. And then coming in and having the injury. Going forward, I think Tua will be Miami’s guy. They invested a lot into him and they got pieces around him. This is the year where they figure out if he can carry a team and I think he will.”
The Dolphins are presumably not done with overhauling the offense either. The question of how good the finished product will be belong to a couple of different variables: how quickly can the new pieces mesh with the existing foundation and, just as importantly, how big of a jump can Tagovailoa make in Year 2?