The Miami Dolphins haven’t played since Nov. 16, but quarterback Tua Tagovailoa still managed to make the video highlights this week.
On Tuesday, Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood, Florida, posted a video of the former Alabama All-American playing the guitar as a patient sang the Ed Sheeran song “Thinking Out Loud.”
There’s a line in that song that says, “I’ll just keep on making the same mistakes hoping that you’ll understand,” which might be applicable to the Dolphins’ season, at least for the first half of the 2025 campaign.
But at 1-6 and coming off a 31-6 loss to the Cleveland Browns, Miami fought back. The Dolphins won three of their next four games going into their Week 12 bye.
“I think there’s a lot of things that you can take away from a season like this,” Tagovailoa said on Wednesday, “when things aren’t going the way you’ve expected it, when you have goals for yourself that help try to accomplish the goals for the team and they’re not aligning, they’re not going the way you want it to go. So there’s a lot of things I can learn from there that I’ve been able to look back at.
“But, yeah, throughout all of that had great reflection time, great rest and recovery as well throughout that time, and just glad we get to get back at it and, hopefully, we can continue our win streak and sort of the mantra that we’ve had these past couple weeks.”
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By upending the Buffalo Bills 30-13 on Nov. 9 and edging the Washington Commanders 16-13 in overtime on Nov. 16, Miami has revived its faint playoff hopes with the 2-9 New Orleans Saints and 2-9 New York Jets coming up next on the Dolphins’ schedule.
While it’s probably not a stretch to forecast Miami will need to sweep its remaining six games to have a postseason opportunity, Tagovailoa said the Dolphins can’t approach it that way.
“We can’t look forward because we can’t control any of that that’s in the future,” Tagovailoa said. “Obviously, what’s happened in the past has happened. What we can control is today, things that we have. We just had practice. We can control what we get out of our meetings when we watch practice. We can control all of that. And I think our main focus is sort of collectively focusing all our energy on our football. And what does that look like? For every position, that’s different. But I think that’s what our formula has been these past couple weeks, and that’s what we’re trying to accomplish.”
The Saints and Dolphins square off at noon CST Sunday at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida.
New Orleans is tied with the Las Vegas Raiders for the fewest points in the NFL and returned from its open date with a 24-10 loss to the Falcons on Sunday.
“I don’t think you look at their record,” Tagovailoa said about playing the Saints. “I think you look at the team for what it is. For myself, I have to look at their defense for what it is. And they have a really good defense. They played a lot of really good offenses, and it’s been really close games as well. And for our defense, they’re looking at their offense visually the same. And I think that’s how you look at it.
“This is the NFL, right? All these guys are getting paid. We’re all getting paid to do a job, and that doesn’t mean you show up on Sunday and you’re guaranteed a win. It’s any given Sunday that anything can happen. And so we’re not looking at this as we’re just going to show up and win the game. I don’t think any of us think that. We got to prepare the way we need to to put ourselves in the best position to help ourselves win this game, and we got to go out and prepare for a 60-minute battle.”