Miami Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel on Friday morning couldn’t hide the fact he had barely slept in the hours after Tua Tagovailoa suffered his fourth concussion in the last five years.
McDaniel and Tagovailoa have a rare relationship — “I look at Tua as a family member of mine,” he said Friday — and the coach gave his QB a kiss on the head as Tagovailoa came off the field with the help of the team’s medical staff late Thursday night.
Miami Dolphins’ Mike McDaniel Reacts to Tua Tagovailoa Concussion
What was his message to Tua in the moment?
“I told him he’s the starting quarterback of his family and to go in the locker room, take a deep breath, and I’ll see you soon.”
McDaniel hadn’t yet spoken to Tagovailoa Friday morning when he met with reporters via Zoom. But he spent the previous hours thinking deeply about the impact of the latest head injury — on both the player and the team as a whole.
The Dolphins for now are planning to have Skylar Thompson start when they face the Seattle Seahawks in Week 3. And they will likely add a quarterback, either off another team’s practice squad or via free agency.
It’s a heavy load for any person, particularly one who is also crushed after a unexpectedly bad performance by his team Sunday night against its biggest rival. The Dolphins turned the ball over three times and weren’t really competitive for the final three quarters in their 31-10 loss to the Buffalo Bills.
“Losses are tough,” McDaniel said. “The ones that you’ve really built yourself up to try to get done, and when you lose in a surprising manner, that’s really tough. When you don’t give yourself a chance because of turnover differential, that’s really tough.
“And then you have your heart completely involved. … When family is going through something, you know how it is. You’re trying to think about a ton of different stuff that people are counting on me to think about. Not easy.”
As for when Tagovailoa might return to the field?
“There’s a lot of people that have vested interest in the Miami Dolphins, and there’s a lot of fans and there’s a lot of people that want to support. But quite literally, questioning timelines, that gives forth anxiety — trying to meet them, trying to assess what this means for playing.
“This is heady stuff that you have to be diligent and deliberate and, you know, coaching up Tua, ‘Hey, your job is to be a dad and to communicate daily,’ and we’ll have daily assessments with experts in the field and handle that. And that is the only thing that matters because you would be able to feel if I was trying to vibe out and diminishing what this was based on some symptoms.”