Because the Miami Dolphins lost to the Buffalo Bills in Week 18, dropping them out of the No. 2 seed in the AFC, Tua Tagovailoa and company play on Saturday night in Arrowhead Stadium against the Kansas City Chiefs.
Instead of playing in Miami Gardens, Florida, where it will be about 68 degrees, the aqua and orange will face -3 degrees in Kansas City with wind chills nearing -30 degrees.
This matchup with the Chiefs will be extremely cold, as there haven’t been many games played in NFL history under 0. Tagovailoa said earlier in the week that the coldest game he’s ever played was in Seattle, Washington while he was in high school when the temperature was around 15 degrees.
Prior to Saturday’s game, former New York Giants quarterback and two-time Super Bowl champion Eli Manning offered some advice to Tagovailoa.
“Go out pregame and get a game plan to how the weather feels.” Manning said on ‘Mad Dog Sports Radio with Chris Russo’ (transcribed by Sports Illustrated). “When the weather gets real, real cold, the ball tends to get slick. In the pregame work a lot of the ball-handling, because you may not always get a great grip on the balls in the shotgun so just work on some of the plays and snaps.
“Have a great plan for keeping your hands warm on the sidelines, so that for every possession the hands are feeling good and you have a good grip on the ball and it comes out how you expect it to.”
Throwing the ball can become extremely difficult in this weather, so it will be imperative that Tagovailoa and the Dolphins do everything they can to keep the quarterback’s hands from going numb.
Luckily for Miami, they have been one of the league’s best rushing teams this season, and Kansas City hasn’t been great at stopping a ground attack. So, if Tagovailoa is having difficulty placing the ball in the tight spots that he’s used to, De’Von Achane, Jeff Wilson Jr. and Raheem Mostert (if he’s healthy), will be given ample opportunities to run all over the field at Arrowhead to try and keep the Dolphins’ Super Bowl aspirations alive.
