How to Evaluate Tua's Time in Miami As He Heads to Atlanta

Tua Tagovailoa's time with the Miami Dolphins is done, his stint coming to an unceremonious end when the team announced it would be releasing him at the start of the new league year Wednesday.

The move closed not only the Tua chapter of Dolphins history, but essentially the one related to the massive rebuilding project that gave the team so many assets to put together a contending team after tearing it all down in 2019.

Tagovailoa was the poster child for that rebuilding project as the first of nine picks in the first or second round the Dolphins had in the 2020 and 2021 drafts.

Tua became the seventh of those nine to leave Miami, following Noah Igbinoghene, Robert Hunt, Raekwon Davis, Jaelan Phillips, Jevon Holland and Liam Eichenberg. Only Austin Jackson and Jaylen Waddle are left.

Gone too are all the superstars the Dolphins brought in via trade or free agency, that list consisting of Tyreek Hill, Terron Armstead, Bradley Chubb and Jalen Ramsey.

That group should have accomplished more than two playoff appearances and zero playoff wins.

And Tua, like it or not, was at the center of it all.

TUA'S ROUGH RIDE

As we've said before, calling Tagovailoa a bust is unfair considering he led the NFL in passer rating in 2022, in passing yards in 2023 and (even though this shouldn't mean nearly as much) in completion percentage in 2024.

When the Dolphins offense was humming in the first three months of the 2022 season and for most of 2023, Tagovailoa certainly was doing his part, getting the ball to the playmakers on the outside, most often Hill but also Waddle and the other players on offense.

Tua had his share of highlights as well, most notably the epic 2022 comeback at Baltimore when he threw six touchdown passes, the 2023 opener against the Chargers and the historic blowout of the Denver Broncos in the home opener two weeks later.

Tua seemed like the perfect fit for what Mike McDaniel wanted to do offensively, namely, get the ball into the hands of Hill and Waddle as quickly as possible.

But that offense, no matter how explosive it could be at times, never was able to rise up against better opponents or later in the season when it mattered most.

A lot of it was the design, where the emphasis of speed and precision often couldn't overcome physicality that could disrupt the timing of things.

And while everybody had a hand in the disappointments, it was Tua who, as the franchise quarterback hopeful, needed to raise his game more than anybody else.

It's where Tua came up short.

And it simply because that's not who he was.

Tua was a scheme-specific player who could succeed, even excel, if everybody else around him was doing their job as schemed, not someone who could make something out of nothing like the elite quarterbacks do on a regular basis.

When defenses started figuring out the Dolphins' offense, and Hill was slowed by injuries over the past two seasons, Tua's physical limitations were exposed, as they were in his first two seasons when the personnel around him was mediocre at best, and the passing game badly faded.

The bottom line is that Tua was the most productive quarterback for the Dolphins since Dan Marino, but an argument could be made that Tua was a lot more productive because of the talent around him. This wasn't who Tua was before Hill arrived or the past two seasons.

The reality is that Tagovailoa had two very good seasons (2022 and 2023) and four others that were mediocre — yes, even 2024 when his passer rating was over 100, thanks to a steady diet of screens and dump-offs.

That the Dolphins are willing to eat $99 million of cap space to move on from him speaks volumes.

No, Tua wasn't a bust as the fifth overall pick in the 2020 NFL draft, but he certainly wasn't a hit, either and it's not a stretch to say they picked the worst options among the four quarterbacks available to them after Joe Burrow was gone at No. 1 — because they would have been better off with Justin Herbert, Jordan Love or Jalen Hurts.

Making things worse, the Dolphins made an unwise commitment after that 2023 season, which was his first fully healthy one in four years and failed to produce a signature victory when they gave him that contract extension.

And they put themselves in the position of having almost no choice but to give in to Tua by going to training camp with Skylar Thompson and Mike White as their backups instead of having a more solid alternative if they stood firm in making Tua play on his fifth-year option.

That's in the past now, though, and Tua now will try to revive his career with the Atlanta Falcons.

While Tagovailoa backs up and/or tries to beat out Michael Penix Jr., the Dolphins will be dealing with the consequences of a bad contract decision that followed a bad decision at the top of the 2020 draft.

Ultimately, Tagovailoa wasn't a total failure for the Dolphins, but they just needed more.