Miami Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel wants his team’s focus on the Cleveland Browns, the Sunday opponent. Maybe Miami quarterback Tua Tagovailoa saying he “made a mistake” will be enough to get it there.
After the Dolphins lost to the Los Angeles Chargers 29-27 on Sunday, Tagovailoa called out unnamed teammates during his postgame press conference. That drew a national-media spotlight brighter than a 1-5 team might seem to merit and apparently didn’t sit well with the Miami locker room either.
“I feel like things that happen within the team should stay between the team,” Dolphins center Aaron Brewer said on Monday. “… Overall, anything that happens within the building or anything we talk about with each other should stay between each other. You know what I’m saying? It’s not for the outside world.”
At his press conference on Wednesday afternoon, Tagovailoa said he realizes he failed to protect the team.
“I, as a leader of this team, of the Miami Dolphins, the comments that had been said, I would say, I’ve made a mistake,” Tagovailoa said in his opening remarks, “and I’m owning up to that right now. I’ve talked to guys on the team about it, talked to the leaders about it, and they know my heart. They know that the intent was right. But no matter the intent, the intent can be right, but when things get misconstrued or however the media wants to portray it, that leaves a void of silence and a lot of questions for the guys on our team.
“Now, being one and five, we talk a lot about, all right, we got to get this going. We got to get this going, come in excited to go to work, forget about the noise, and I feel like I just added on to that for our guys. For myself, I got to look at myself as the leader protecting the team. I don’t feel like I did that to the best of my abilities. I felt like I let the emotions of the game get to me after the game. And, you know, that’s something that I can learn from as a leader on this team, and what happens in-house should be protected and none of that should have gotten out, and so want to publicly apologize about that. Want to move forward and now I want to focus on the Cleveland Browns.”
What drew condemnation from media commentators and may have caused consternation within the team were the former Alabama All-American’s final remarks on Sunday in response to how the Dolphins can get the season headed in the right direction.
“I think it starts with the leadership in helping articulate that for the guys and then what we’re expecting out of the guys, right?” Tagovailoa said. “We’re expecting this. Are we getting that? Are we not getting that?
“We have guys showing up to player-only meetings late, guys not showing up to player-only meetings. Like, there’s a lot that goes into that. Do we have to make this mandatory? Do we not have to make this mandatory? So it’s a lot of things of that nature that we got to get cleaned up, and it starts with the little things like that.”
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On Monday, McDaniel said: “That’s not the forum to displace that. I think he knows that now. I do honestly believe there was no ill intention.”
On Wednesday, McDaniel was asked if the team had put the situation behind it.
“That’s the first, last and only thing, if I have anything to say about it -- and I did in several meetings today -- is the Cleveland Browns and our focus within that regard,” McDaniel said. “Absolutely, (Tagovailoa) communicated with his teammates both in a group and individually, and there’s much bigger fish to fry in our team’s opinion, in my opinion.”
Cleveland also has a 1-5 record.
The Dolphins and Browns kick off at noon CDT Sunday at Huntington Bank Field in Cleveland.
With rookie Dillon Gabriel approaching his third game as the Browns’ quarterback, Sunday’s game will be the first in the NFL to feature to left-handed starting QBs since Michael Vick and the Atlanta Falcons defeated Chris Simms and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 14-3 on Sept. 17, 2006.
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