Tag: Mike McDaniel

‘Zero’ medical experts told Tua Tagovailoa to stop playing football

Mike McDaniel says Tua Tagovailoa met with a “litany” of medical experts and none told him to walk away from football.

Tua Tagovailoa will return to the Miami Dolphins’ lineup Sunday more than a month after a concussion suffered against the Buffalo Bills had many questioning if he should ever play again.

But less than two years after Tagovailoa told reporters that he considered retirement after suffering multiple concussions in 2022, the Dolphins quarterback dismissed the idea of walking away from football at a press conference earlier this week.

According to Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel, medical experts made no effort to urge Tagovailoa to make that decision.

“Tua met with a litany, a laundry list, a long list of medical experts, and zero of them recommended that he shouldn’t play football,” McDaniel told reporters Friday. “So that means 100 percent of them were supporting the continued journey and I think that is as easy of a relay as possible.

“I think there’s a lot of things out there, so I can’t tell you how many people or if many people asked him, but I know that’s what drove his confidence is making his decision in step with medical experts who fully support what he’s doing.”

When Tagovailoa spoke to reporters Monday, the Dolphins quarterback said he had no discussion with his family about leaving the sport and he dismissed the idea of wearing a Guardian Cap to provide an additional layer of protection. But McDaniel wants it to be known that Tagovailoa is as mindful as anyone when it comes to concussions.

” From all the way to the most minimal thing with hydration and how you eat – I know in the locker room, he is my foremost expert on the brain,” McDaniel said of Tagovailoa. “No one in this process has trivialized any of this. … I think he’s really gone above and beyond since 2022 really, and he’s taking it with that same seriousness, just probably leveled up a little bit.”

Tagovailoa led the NFL in passer rating (105.5) during his injury-shortened 2022 season and was the league’s leading passer (4,624 yards) in 2023 after playing in all 17 games for the first time in his career.

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Dolphins will ease Tua Tagovailoa back into offense, says Mike McDaniel

“You don’t go and ride the Tour de France on the first time you’ve picked the bike back up, you know?”

When Tua Tagovailoa spoke to reporters earlier this week, the Miami Dolphins quarterback said he’s been symptom-free since the day after he suffered a concussion in Week 2 and he’s spent the last five weeks throwing, studying, and prepping for his return.

But even if he’s physically ready for his Week 8 return, Tagovailoa hasn’t worked with Dolphins receivers in over a month. So head coach Mike McDaniel doesn’t think it’s the best idea to throw the entire playbook at the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday in Tagovailoa’s first game back.

“You don’t go and ride the Tour de France on the first time you’ve picked the bike back up, you know?” McDaniel told reporters Wednesday. “So that’s kind of the way we’re approaching it and excited to see him start the process.”

What a dialed back version of the Dolphins’ offense looks like remains to be seen.

The goal, according to McDaniel, is “that everyone is playing their most comfortable for the first time since Week 1.” And Tagovailoa’s confidence and comfort is the team’s top priority.

“He needs to be the captain, he needs to be the leader of this team, and he needs to feel complete ownership of his game,” McDaniel said. “You’re trying to build on what the team is doing right now and then utilize his strengths.”

On Monday, McDaniel said that he warned Dolphins players not to think of Tagovailoa as the “savior” who will rescue the offense after it spent four games sinking in quicksand. But the excitement of Dolphins players has been palpable.

Wide receiver Tyreek Hill, who hasn’t caught a touchdown pass since Week 1, said hearing Tagovailoa’s voice in practice nearly brought him to tears. And running back Raheem Mostert said the connection between Tagovailoa and Hill in their first practice in over a month “just looked like they didn’t skip a beat.”

McDaniel wants the Dolphins offense to walk before it starts to run, but the sooner the unit can get going, the better.

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Tua Tagovailoa won’t wear a Guardian Cap and Dolphins can’t make him

De’Von Achane became the first Dolphins player to wear a Guardian Cap. Tua Tagovailoa made it clear he won’t be the second.

De’Von Achane became the first Miami Dolphins player to wear a Guardian Cap during a regular season game in the team’s Week 7 loss against the Indianapolis Colts. Tua Tagovailoa made it clear Monday that he has no intention of being the second.

In April, the NFL changed its rules to allow players the choice to wear a Guardian Cap — a helmet with additional padding — during games. To this point, no quarterback has worn one and Tagovailoa dismissed the idea in his first press conference since suffering a concussion iN September.

“Nope,” Tagovailoa said. “Personal choice.”

Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel told reporters Monday that Tagovailoa “has a better understanding of his responsibility towards to the entire organization” following his concussion, and “he needs to be smart about how he engages in contact.”

But McDaniel also made it clear that the Dolphins will not, and can not, force him to wear a Guardian Cap if he doesn’t want one.

“We aren’t allowed to mandate things that aren’t mandated in terms of their attire,” McDaniel said. “I always preach that it is the individual player’s determination if they want to do so, and so what you don’t do is skirt the information gathering process and you make sure they’re well-informed and they have access to all the available options which is supremely important to me.”

Will it matter, though?

When the NFL began requiring players to wear Guardian Caps in training camp in 2022, the league said wearing one “can reduce the force from head contact by 10 percent.” But there are at least a couple studies that concluded that they don’t make much of a difference at all.

The truly safest way for Tagovailoa to avoid further concussions would be to walk away from football, and he made it clear Monday that’s a conversation he’s no longer interested in having.

“How much risk do we take when we get up in the morning to go drive to work?” Tagovailoa said. “[You could] get into a car crash, I don’t know. Everything I think takes risk. Every time we all suit up, we’re all taking a risk that we could potentially get hurt, whether it’s a concussion, a broken bone, anything. You get up off of the bed the wrong way, you potentially could risk you spraining your ankle. There’s just risk in any and everything and I’m willing to play the odds, that’s it.”

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Mike McDaniel: Dolphins can’t expect Tua Tagovailoa to be ‘savior’

The Dolphins have more issues that need ironing out than just their quarterback play, says Mike McDaniel.

In four games without Tua Tagovailoa, the Miami Dolphins scored a grand total of 40 points. For perspective, the last team unable to average more than 10 points per game over the course of a season was the 1991 Indianapolis Colts, who fired their coach after five games and finished 1-15.

Despite having weapons like Tyreek Hill, Jaylen Waddle, and De’Von Achane, among others, backup quarterbacks Tyler Huntley, Skylar Thompson, and Tim Boyle simply couldn’t find the end zone nearly enough.

But with Tagovailoa set to return this week, Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel wants to pump the brakes on the expectation that the offense will suddenly be back to firing on all cylinders with its starter.

“Across the board, I think everyone would say that he’s the leader of this team,” McDaniel said Monday. “But I think it’s important to state, and what I just finished talking to the team about is that he’s not the savior, either. There’s a lot of things that have to be looked at from an individual’s game in all three phases to get better.

“It’s not ‘Alright, Tua’s here. He’s gonna fix the issues.’ Everyone has to be on board to do their part into getting the results that we want.”

In a 16-10 loss to the Colts on Sunday, both Hill and Waddle each their first reception of the game after the two-minute warning in the fourth quarter. Tight end Jonnu Smith was the only Dolphins player who caught more than two passes.

Yet, there were plenty of mistakes that had nothing to do with the quarterback position. Raheem Mostert and Alec Ingold each had costly fumbles and the Dolphins racked up twice as much penalty yardage than the Colts. No team in the NFL has averaged more penalty yardage per game so far this season than Miami.

“I don’t think for myself I put any pressure on myself coming back and having to save the team,” Tagovailoa said Monday. “What we got to do is we got to look at this past game. All 11 guys on the field, were we given an opportunity, with the plays that were called, to score on every drive? And if we can say yes, then we can look at ourselves and see what we can do to get better.”

The return of Tagovailoa should smooth out many of the areas that have made the Dolphins’ offense inert so far this season. It’ll take more than the fifth-year quarterback to make the team a contender, though.

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Tyler Huntley got Dolphins receivers back early from bye for extra work

Tyler Huntley didn’t “want to bother too many guys,” but he convinced a couple Dolphins pass catchers to come back early from their bye.

The Miami Dolphins had a week off to get healthy and reset after a rough start to the year, but Tyler Huntley spent that time working to catch up on the offense.

On Monday, Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel said that Huntley used the time to “jump into” the offense ahead of his third straight start in relief of the injured Tua Tagovailoa. On Wednesday, Huntley revealed that he asked some Miami pass catchers to come back early from their time resting to get some extra work.

“I didn’t really want to bother too many guys, you know what I mean?” Huntley said. “The guys that were able to come back early and had a chance to catch a few passes, it was good.”

Huntley didn’t want to specifically say which players cut their bye week short to get back to work. Tight end Jonnu Smith was the only one specifically mentioned by name.

“I think we’ve all seen a big jump from the first week he was with us to the second one, and he’s gotten a lot more comfortable,” Smith said of Huntley earlier this week. “We were able to go in there and win with him and we’ve showed that we can do that and that’s just the expectation. He’s a phenomenal, phenomenal player but a better person, so I’m glad to have that guy back there leading us.”

In Huntley’s first start, the Dolphins struggled to get going, finishing with only 78 passing yards and 184 yards of total offense in a loss against the Tennessee Titans. A week later, Miami more than doubled those totals with 372 offensive yards and 179 passing yards in a win against the New England Patriots.

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Bradley Chubb not ready to return, Dolphins ‘optimistic’ about recovery

Mike McDaniel says he’s “optimistic” the Dolphins will get Bradley Chubb back in action at some point, but he’s still not ready yet.

Miami Dolphins pass rusher Bradley Chubb is still out of action as he works to return from an ACL tear he suffered on New Year’s Eve last season. While he’s eligible to make his return from the PUP list at any point, Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel thinks it’s still too soon for Chubb to get back on the practice field.

“I don’t expect to see Bradley this week and, as far as weeks moving forward, we’ll see. I don’t expect that to happen this week,” McDaniel said Monday morning.

Chubb, 28, tore an ACL in 2019 while he was a member of the Denver Broncos and returned in 2020 to earn his first career Pro Bowl honors. But that injury happened in a September game, giving the pass rusher a few extra months to work towards a return.

“The way he’s attacked and the way he’s come back from a pretty serious injury. I’m optimistic that I will, for sure, [see him play in 2024] just because we haven’t had any setbacks or anything,” McDaniel said. “I’m optimistic for that, but I can promise you that whenever he is back, he couldn’t have been back any sooner.

“Whenever we are able to see him, that’s as soon as we could’ve gotten him, just because of the sweat equity he’s put in. You wouldn’t know as a teammate that he hadn’t practiced this year just because he’s been around for everything. He’s made sure to keep himself so involved and use his leadership voice as a positive. I’ll be excited for when he gets back on the field, I don’t know when that’ll be.”

The Dolphins could use Chubb’s presence. Only three teams have fewer sacks through the first six weeks, and Miami’s pass rush took a blow a couple weeks ago when Jaelan Phillips suffered a season-ending knee injury.

For now, the Dolphins are relying on Emmanuel Ogbah, Chop Robinson, Quinton Bell, and Tyus Bowser at outside linebacker. Ogbah is the only one of that group who has recorded a sack so far this season. There’s also fifth-round rookie Mohamed Kamara, who hasn’t yet made his NFL debut.

Chubb, who was acquired by the Dolphins in a trade during the 2022 season, has 39.5 career sacks and finished 2023 with 11 sacks.

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Mike McDaniel looked so defeated as Tyreek Hill threw a frustrated tantrum on the Dolphins sidelines

The Dolphins can’t do anything on offense.

If you really wanted to see how valuable Tua Tagovailoa has been to the Dolphins, all you needed to do was take a look over at the Miami sidelines during Monday’s Week 4 loss to the Titans.

Even head coach Mike McDaniel seems to realize that.

The Dolphins have seen their offensive production plummet since Tagovailoa’s latest concussion. And despite having the best receiver-running back tandem in the league, the abysmal quarterback play has rendered all of the Dolphins’ weapons ineffective. Hill, specifically, has just 10 receptions for 87 yards and no touchdowns in the past three games.

It got to the point on Monday where Hill couldn’t hold back the frustration.

Footage from late in the fourth quarter showed Hill screaming and yelling on the sidelines right behind McDaniel. The Dolphins head coach could only stare straight ahead with the most defeated look. He knows the Dolphins are in trouble, and it’s tough to blame Hill for being upset.

This season is quickly starting to slip away from the Dolphins.

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Mike McDaniel: Dolphins offense needs changes, ‘everything is on the table’

The Dolphins need to go “back to the drawing board” on offense, says Mike McDaniel.

It was another brutal game for the Miami Dolphins offense even after a change at quarterback. After joining the team less than two weeks ago, Tyler Huntley was named the starting quarterback against the Titans in Week 4 in the hopes that he could spark some life into the offense. Unfortunately for he and the Dolphins, it was more of the same.

When head coach Mike McDaniel was asked about potential changes to the offense, he said his mind is open.

“Yeah, everything is on the table,” McDaniel said. “You can’t argue the offense is good. To me in a situation like this, I hadn’t really been in one where we haven’t had production consecutively like this so you really have to open your mind to all things.”

Huntley completed 14 of his 22 passes for just 96 yards and it was obvious throughout the game that he hasn’t adapted to the timing of McDaniel’s system. Huntley is a much different quarterback than Tua Tagovailoa in terms of skillset, and the Dolphins offense didn’t seem to do enough to accommodate those differences.

Huntley previously earned starting experience filling in for the Baltimore Ravens’ offense which is largely centered around Lamar Jackson’s elite mobility. On Monday night, Huntley led the Dolphins in the rushing department with 40 yards and a touchdown on eight attempts.

On the Dolphins only touchdown drive, Huntley recorded a big 20-yard scramble that set the Dolphins up at the Tennessee 23-yard line. He finished the drive off by punching it in from the goal line.

When McDaniel states that “everything is on the table,” it’s hard to envision him not considering making Huntley’s mobility a focal point to open up the passing game. Then again, it’s possible Skylar Thompson will have a chance to earn the starting job back to get the team back to McDaniel’s scheme.

Regardless, this offense has some of the most talented players in the league with wide receivers Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle along with De’Von Achane as a duel threat running back. It would seemingly need just a couple adjustments to start functioning at a high level once again.

“There was a tremendous disconnect between preparation and execution,” McDaniel said after the loss last night. “On the field, that’s not even close to good enough, so you just have to go back to the drawing board and assess very critically.”

No matter the changes McDaniel is considering, all eyes will be on him in Week 5 against the Patriots. Can he tweak his offense enough to get the best results from his players? He must make these adjustments quick before this season falls further out of control.

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Dolphins to start Tyler Huntley at QB vs. Titans in Week 4

The Dolphins are turning to former Ravens quarterback Tyler Huntley to lead the way, Mike McDaniel says.

Tyler Huntley will be the Miami Dolphins’ starting quarterback Monday night against the Tennessee Titans, head coach Mike McDaniel told reporters Saturday.

“We’re going to move forward with ‘Snoop’ [Huntley] starting and [Tim] Boyle backing him up on Monday,” McDaniel said. “One thing that was supremely obvious to the team since he got here and even more so this practice week is Snoop has started multiple and many big games.

“He’s done an impressive job assimilating into the locker room and understanding our language as his own, and the team is excited for him.”

Huntley, 26, joined the Dolphins last week after he was signed off the Baltimore Ravens’ practice squad. He was listed as a third emergency quarterback in Miami’s Week 3 loss against the Seattle Seahawks, because McDaniel deemed it too soon for the Huntley to be ready to operate the offense.

But with Skylar Thompson dealing with a rib injury, the Dolphins are turning to Huntley sooner rather than later.

On Friday, Huntley told reporters that he’s working to pick up the Miami offense, which is “like riding a bike.” He also said he and Dolphins coaches will work to “dumb down how many [plays] we like or don’t like” before Monday.

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Tyler Huntley: Picking up Dolphins offense is ‘like riding a bike’

Tyler Huntley says he’s getting the hang of Mike McDaniel’s offense.

Tyler Huntley has been a member of the Miami Dolphins for a little more than a week, but when the Tennessee Titans come to South Beach on Monday night, the 26-year-old quarterback may be asked to start for his new team.

After only a handful of practice days in Miami, Huntley is already feeling like he’s starting to get the hang of Mike McDaniel’s offense.

“It’s like riding a bike – first time, you’re a little iffy, you didn’t know how to pedal,” Huntley told reporters Thursday. “Then you just start putting it all together, pedaling, going in a straight line, then after a while, you’re going to start standing up.”

In the Dolphins’ 24-3 loss to the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday, Huntley was an emergency third quarterback because McDaniel felt it was too soon to expect him to be comfortable running the offense.

But with Skylar Thompson now dealing with a rib injury, it may be Huntley — who is working to memorize the playbook as fast as possible — who is thrust into action.

“You’ve got to literally learn it like learning for the bar exam,” Huntley said. “You’ve got to go all in and just absorb everything that’s in the playbook. … Later on in the week, we’ll be able to dumb down how many [plays] we like or don’t like.”

McDaniel says he’s been impressed by the rapid progress Huntley is making since his arrival in Miami last week.

“[I’m] very, very encouraged,” McDaniel said. “I think we – Chris (Grier) and his staff, in conjunction with the coaching staff — we targeted him for a reason. … I can see him gain the confidence of his teammates as well.”

“Tremendous work ethic,” Dolphins receiver Tyreek Hill said Thursday when asked about Huntley. “He’s a special talent. We’ve got a lot of things that go into this offense. We got motions, we’ve got getting the play out before, so he’s done a good job of staying in the film room learning all of that stuff.”

On Thursday, McDaniel said he wasn’t ready to decide which quarterback will start for the Dolphins on Monday against the Tennessee Titans, in part because of the “competitive advantage” that comes with waiting to make the announcement.

Huntley, who earned Pro Bowl honors in 2022 despite making just four starts, has eight career touchdown passes with seven interceptions.

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