The most significant and unseen parts of the Mike McDaniel revolution in Miami have been the interpersonal moments of kindness and humility that we will probably never hear about. I will maintain—and I would assume many Dolphins players would agree—that as fun as it was to play for McDaniel at various parts of the past two seasons, especially when the Dolphins were pasting 70 points on the board, it was probably more enjoyable simply coming to work every day and associating with someone who isn’t a Machiavellian-style politician or a relentless ladder-climber concerned only with optics (in a profession filled with them).
His work with Tua Tagovailoa over the course of two seasons has altered the baseline conversation from: Is this player even capable of staying on the field, to, Is he one of the 10 best quarterbacks in the NFL? The improvement in all of his major statistical benchmarks is not just proof of someone growing with the rigors of the professional game. It was the kind of drastic growth that can only be facilitated by a human being seeing another human being for who they are.
But now, after a 26–7 shellacking in Kansas City, I wonder how that conversation will change this offseason. Tagovailoa may expect to be paid as a franchise quarterback, but, through performances like we’ve seen over the back stretch of the 2023 season, may not receive that financial luxury. McDaniel has been through attrition as the coach of the Dolphins, but his biggest challenge yet may be in coming out and saying what most of us are probably thinking.
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To be clear, what we should be thinking is: Tagovailoa’s growth has been incredible, but for a team that has a soon-to-be 30-year-old Tyreek Hill, a pre-extension Jaylen Waddle, a handful of late-prime defensive stars and one of the (if not the) highest-paid and most revered defensive coordinators in the sport in Vic Fangio, Tagovailoa’s level of play is not commensurate with where the Dolphins see themselves as an organization.
This isn’t a cop out. It’s O.K. to say that Tagovailoa would be good enough to start for 15 NFL teams right now, just not the Dolphins in 2024.
I’m not making Saturday’s game, in which Tagovailoa went 20-for-39 for 199 yards, one touchdown and one interception, the specific referendum. You can’t, even though we did see a good portion of Tagovailoa at his worst (costly, late decisions, throws out of rhythm and dangerous drifting in the pocket). Saturday night’s Dolphins-Chiefs game was terrible for almost everyone, although it’s hard to ascribe an exact percentage of that awfulness to the subzero temperatures at Arrowhead Stadium. (As a sidenote, I would be curious to know whether this game would even have been played as scheduled had the temperature—the fourth-coldest in NFL history—not been used as some cruel carnival attraction to suck in $6 subscriptions for a fledgling streaming service that you don’t even need if you’ve kept your DVDs of The Office from college like I have.)
The Dolphins had been fading throughout the final weeks of the regular season, failing to score 20 points in each of their past two games, including a Week 18 game in which they had a chance to clinch the AFC East and play the wild-card round in Southern Florida.
Over the final four weeks of the season, Tagovailoa was in the Tyrod Taylor–Joe Flacco–Jake Browning tier in terms of his composite expected points added and completion percentage over expectation metric (interestingly enough, he was playing better than Patrick Mahomes in terms of that specific metric). Through this season as a whole, there is a clear demarcation between Tagovailoa’s good games and his less-good games, and that line also seems to separate quality opponents from lesser-quality opponents. Tagovailoa’s best games came against the Broncos, Commanders, Panthers, Chargers, Raiders and Giants. Of his sub-90 quarterback rating games this year, four of the five were on the road. Four of those five opponents were the Eagles, Chiefs, Bills and Ravens.
Miami is built to contend for division championships and capitalize on this window of time. As we learned in the Houston Texans’ win over the Cleveland Browns, there is a hasty and irresponsible way to approach this ticking clock. There are also brilliant moments of self-realization and team building that result in a healthy pivot at the position, setting teams up for longer-term success.
McDaniel deserves to be at the forefront of that decision-making process for the Dolphins. Though he will never admit it, and has actually flat-out denied his role in Tagovailoa’s growth when asked about it publicly at press conferences, he has proved beyond doubt that he understands the position clearly.
No one will call McDaniel disingenuous for using that knowledge to conclude that the team needs to move on. Or, at the very least, force Tagovailoa to operate on a lame-duck year, play through his fifth-year option with no assurances, and compete with someone else. But that is the point at which we’ve clearly arrived.
