Miami quarterback Tua Tagovailoa had one of the worst games statistically of his NFL career on Sunday as the Indianapolis Colts trounced the Dolphins 33-8.
“We knew the guy, you know, he get the ball out pretty quick,” Colts cornerback Xavien Howard said, “and once we take away his first read, I feel like it’s panic mode after that. And it showed (Sunday), man. We took away his first read, and he was trying to get rid of the ball real quick.”
Until this season, Howard had been a teammate of Tagovailoa’s on the Dolphins, and the defensive back said his advice to the Indianapolis defense paid off in the season-opening victory.
“We knew it’s a lot of bang, quick throws in the middle,” Howard said, “so I told them, ‘Man, clog the middle and make sure they throw the ball outside. And we clogged the middle, and I think we got two interceptions by clogging the middle.”
During his Wednesday press conference, Tagovailoa was asked about Howard’s “panic” remark.
“There’s a lot of them where I should have progressed but didn’t,” Tagovailoa said. “That’s what my feet had told me to do, but I didn’t do that. …
“If you look at the games where I have performed and done well, it’s also when I’m getting off of my first read and progressing or going through the progressions, kind of like what my feet is telling me, so playing in that sense.”
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Against the Colts, the former Alabama All-American completed 14-of-23 passes for 114 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions. Tagovailoa, who has missed 14 games over the previous four seasons because of injuries, was sacked three times and hit six times as the Dolphins lost two starting offensive linemen during the game.
Tagovailoa’s passing-efficiency rating of 51.7 was the worst single-game number of his career, except for a 40.6 showing on Sept. 19, 2021, when he threw only four passes before departing a 35-0 loss to the Buffalo Bills with broken ribs.
Tagovailoa completed 60.9 percent of his passes on Sunday after leading the NFL in completion rate last season at 72.9 percent.
Tagovailoa posted his fewest passing yards in a game since he had 110 in a 27-25 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals on Sept. 29, 2022. Tagovailoa was taken from the field by ambulance to a hospital in the first half of that game.
“I think I saw quarterback play that was less than to be desired, which Tua absolutely knows,” Miami coach Mike McDaniel said on Wednesday. “But he’s the captain and the franchise quarterback, and everybody kind of fell victim to something similar. I also know that he’s very, very much like most quarterbacks, to be honest, where you’re putting a lot of work into something and your first time doing it for a collective four quarters in months, you’re not at your best.
“My biggest thing is I don’t want to make the same mistakes twice. I don’t want to have things happen for no reason or in vain. You make them purposeful by improving upon the things that you failed at and then making sure that your teammates do the same. So he’s comfortable with that in terms of we need to be better collectively. He and everybody else needs to be better for us to get done what we want to get done.”
McDaniel termed the Dolphins’ performance against Indianapolis as “embarrassing,” and he applied that to more than the quarterback play.
“I think part of that is absolutely on him,” McDaniel said, “part of it is on his eligibles and part of it is on the play-caller and how even you are with run and pass. So, obviously, I couldn’t do the last one this past game as the situation was. I also could’ve, on the plays he threw an interception, I could have called a run play that play, too. We all have to be accountable, and aggressively so, if we want things to change.”
Tagovailoa called the problems in Game 1 “definitely correctable” for Game 2, when Miami plays the New England Patriots in an AFC East rivalry contest at noon CDT Sunday at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida.
“I got the offense together,” Tagovailoa said, “and we had a meeting about things we wanted to do to hang our hats on this week, points of emphasis, and how we want to go about it this week. We got all of that communicated to those guys.”
Dolphins right guard James Daniels went out with a pectoral injury sustained on Miami’s third offensive snap against the Colts. The Dolphins have put him on injured reserve.
Right offensive tackle Austin Jackson left Sunday’s game with a toe injury, and McDaniel said he was “anticipating Larry (Borom) is going to start” in that spot against New England.
Kion Smith is in line to make his first NFL start on Sunday after stepping in when Daniels got hurt in the season-opener.
“That’ll be tough,” Tagovailoa said about the missing linemen. “But this isn’t an instance where this is the first time it’s happened for us where a new guy gets put in and we got to trust that he knows what he’s doing or he knows what he has to do in a certain protection or run-game scheme. I trust the guys that are going to be in there. They had some reps throughout training camp while I was in there, and so I got the utmost confidence in those guys.”
Miami has a 7-12 record in games in which Tagovailoa gets sacked three or more times. When that doesn’t happen, the Dolphins have gone 31-13.
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