Tua Gets Tossed
Tua Turndaballova has become TuaDaBenchWarma. Ooof. No. You know what? I will not apologize for that pun. You’re gonna have to live with it.
In a move that surprised me but probably shouldn’t have, Tua has been benched. The Dolphins have elected to spend the remains of their season starting 7th-round rookie QB/Kraven the Hunter Quinn Ewers. The Dolphins season is over. Mike McDaniel was supposedly given the green light when the GM was fired, so it’s possible his job is not actually in danger and now he’s shutting Tua down in order to see what the rookie has. Probably to judge just how seriously they need to take the position into account this offseason.
Tua’s not going anywhere (probably). His cap hit is staggering. The only thing the Dolphins can do is take a huge punishment or see if any team is willing to trade for him. It’s a sad, unceremonious end to a roller coaster career. But Tua just…isn’t good. Whatever potential is there is buried under years of brain trauma and failure. He’s only good in garbage time once the pressure is off. He can’t win in cold weather. He’s just…not good.
That isn’t to say it’s over. He might still be salvageable. Trevor Lawrence was being regarded as a letdown until the latter half of this season when he has really turned it on. Tua is probably toast in Miami but if he does leave, he might have places where he can succeed. He has the ability. The Steelers? He’s functional enough that he could be a decent fit there. The Vikings? Possibly, though he’d probably have to stay a backup since McCarthy is playing *passable* football now. The Raiders? Well, it’s at least warm weather. The Jets? Well, death comes for us all. Maybe the Cardinals can trade Tua for Kyler straight up.
Comedy option: make him Herbert’s backup
Honestly, I always get a little leery of the “make a joke based on a guys name” thing, especially when its a non-standard-white-person name.
I get the intent of it, but especially with Tua its always felt less of a jab at his too-high interception rate (which is absolutely a legitimate line of criticism) and more mocking his name for being hard to say…
…or, at least, hard to say for an average white person. And yeah, I struggle to say Tagovailoa, and I absolutely did copy-paste that from Wikipedia. I guess I just feel weird about making it the core of a joke.
Not criticizing anyone for making the jokes or anything, just blabbering on about some weirdness, I guess.
…as for the player? Figure he’s going to get tossed aside once it makes sense for the salary cap, bounce around as a backup for a year or two, and then suddenly be thrust into the core of a good team and go on a deep playoff run that makes everyone wonder if the Dolphins really did fail him. You know, the Sam Darnold/Daniel Jones pathway to late-career success.
Or he retires. And given the number of concussions he’s suffered over his career, I really hope he just retires and tries to retain what mental health he still has left.
This one isn’t even that bad. The one that gets forgotten is the comic that poked fun at Cam Newton’s hairstyle. Tried to look for it but I couldn’t find it. It probably was deleted to hide the evidence.
I did delete that comic. I did it because I realized it was ignorant joke, I did not understand the significance behind the hairstyle, and it shouldn’t stay up. I regret that one, and I apologize for it.
as there’s a drive into deep left field by Castellanos, it will be a home run, and so that’ll make it a 4–0 ballgame
laffo
Good on you, I didn’t realize there was significance to hair style until seeing this
So long as you don’t throw an N into his last name like at least one announcer I can’t recall at the moment does I think you’re doing fine.
There’s supposed to be an N there though.
Tuanigamanuolepola Donny Tagovailoa[1] (/ˌtʌŋoʊvaɪˈloʊə/ TUNG-oh-vy-LOH-ə;[2] born March 2, 1998)
Imagine if they’d, y’know, protected him with an O-line made of something other than tofu and masking tape.
Those comparatively rapid succession concussions in seasons past should have been it for Tua. Yes, he wanted to continue to play, but that is evidently not what he should have done. And no way should Miami have thrown a telephone number at his bank account.
I wanted him to do well, I really did. He was the first truly exciting QB prospect we’d drafted since… since… since Marino. And I’m going back through our own hydra right now (Christ on Fire, we’ve had some clunkers haven’t we) – of the rest, FAs and trades included, there’s only Gus Frerotte, Chad Pennington, Ryan Tannehill & Matt Moore standing out as names remembered fondly. Trent Green never got a proper chance, poor bugger, and Scott Mitchell was gone before he could do much either.
But Miami gonna Miami just as hard as Cleveland gonna Cleveland. They’re never going to protect their QB.
No idea how the financials would work out but the Falcons would be a good team for him. Cousin’s has a potential out on his contract this offseason with a huge dead cap hit. Penix and Tua are both lefties, Penix will be coming off ACL surgery, again. Tua could start the season if he plays well great, if not after a few weeks Penix should be more stable on the knee and can slide back in.
digging the evolution in your style. clean, simple lines. economical. I even get a whiff of ligne claire.
My god, there’s even a Sexy Rexy watermark.
Tua is a quarterback that needs a specific scheme and coach to do the heavy lifting for him, kind of like early Jared Goff. That’s why he was so dynamite in 2022-2023, because the league hadn’t caught up with the scheme yet.
Now, it’s patiently obvious that he picks a spot to throw the ball in advance, so linebackers and defensive backs can sit off the spot and wait. Tua won’t adjust based on the defensive look.
His brain being absolute mashed potatoes at this point doesn’t help either. I had a weird thought of Arizona and Miami swapping Kyler and Tua straight up, with each team eating the other’s contract.
Oops, didn’t read Dave’s post all the way to the bottom. Glad I’m not alone with the trade idea.
I’ve always thought trading dead cap for dead cap should happen more often.
Unfortunately it also accelerates the dead cap, unless there’s only one year left on the contract.
It is regrettable that Tua didn’t retire when the concussions got out of hand. It has affected his performance as a QB and he certainly had the talent at one time to be a consistent top 10 QB.
Might as well sit on that paycheck and collect.
One lesson teams should learn from Tua’s, Russel Wilson’s and Deshaun Watson’s contracts is that you do NOT give a long term contract with a ton of guaranteed money unless you are 110% positive that this is your franchise QB for the next 5-7 years.
It can cripple the franchise if you give someone a contract like that and they flame out and you have to take that HUGE dead money cap hit. Too bad if the QB boohoos, you are better off as a team to let him walk.
I do feel bad for Tua. He’s not quite as big of a what if as Andrew Luck (and possibly Burrow, future pending), but he was a good QB that’s been ruined by a ton of injuries. I do think a lot of people forget that there was a stretch where he was good, consistently good. And then the injuries piled up. I doubt that Tua would ever be a super bowl winning QB, but he could have been a good one nonetheless.
There is one way to salvage the guy.
Send some people all over the world to find and gather seven dragon balls…