This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who watched the Miami Dolphins’ weekend unfold, but the report this morning from NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport is that rookie quarterback Tua Tagovailoa is expected to return to the starting lineup this afternoon against the 2-8-1 Cincinnati Bengals.
Rapoport’s report came through in the early morning hours after plenty of speculation ran rampant this week about who would be taking the snaps for the Dolphins against the Bengals.
#Dolphins QB Tua Tagovailoa (thumb) is expected to be back in as the starter today, source said, assuming all goes well in warmups. In anticipation of being back in the lineup, Tua took most of the first-team reps this week.
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) December 6, 2020
But again, if you watched how the weekend unfolded, the clues were here that this decision was set to be made. Tagovailoa was limited all week in practice, yes. Brian Flores stayed mum on the situation all week long, yes. But Brian Flores also told everyone after the Jets game in Week 12 that a healthy Tagovailoa is the starter for the Dolphins. And then the Dolphins elected not to promote practice squad quarterback Reid Sinnett to the active roster this weekend, indicating that Miami’s two game day quarterbacks would be Tagovailoa and Fitzpatrick.
And if there’s only those two and Tagovailoa is healthy enough to play, he would start — because Brian Flores told us when he was healthy and ready to go that he would.
And then there was the mess yesterday with Tagovailoa’s agent, Leigh Steinberg, who posted that he was flying to Miami to see “Tua play the Bengals” before rapidly editing his post to suggest he was actually flying to watch the Dolphins, not just his only client on the team.
The Dolphins may have held this one close to the vest, but every bit of information that has come out since Friday afternoon has indicated that Tagovailoa would be ‘the guy’ in Week 13. Now let’s see if he can get his swagger back after getting knocked around the last time we saw him — in Week 11 versus the Denver Broncos.