MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Chris Grier, Mike McDaniel, and the Miami Dolphins held up their end of the bargain. Beginning in nine days, it’s time for Tua Tagovailoa to hold up his.
The tradeoff for the Dolphins making Tagovailoa by far the richest player in franchise history is that Tua wins, and wins big, in 2024.
Pressure To Win Ramps Up for Miami Dolphins’ Tua Tagovailoa
Tagovailoa next weekend will begin trying to earn the four-year, $212.4 million contract extension (with $132.2 million fully guaranteed) he signed with the Dolphins last month.
Tua’s net worth has gone up substantially. So have his expectations.
Since he signed the deal, both Tagovailoa and McDaniel have used the term “highest-paid employee” in describing Tua. That’s no accident.
The Dolphins employ hundreds of people. None — from the CEO to the cooks — are more important to the company’s success than Tagovailoa. (That includes McDaniel, who recently signed his own contract extension through 2028.)
“You’re on a journey to earn, you’re on the journey to be a starting quarterback, then you’re on a journey to solidify yourself with a commitment from the franchise, and then the second you do that, it just transfers to inherently you want to prove your worth,” McDaniel said this week.
“So I think naturally it’s important to have expectations evolve over time; if you’re trying to be the best version of yourself, you better be getting better, because if not you’re getting worse.”
Tua agrees.
“We know heavy is the crown,” he said last month. “So whoever’s wearing that. …. Like right now, I’m the highest-paid employee in this office. I’ve got to get my whatever together, I’ve got to get that right and get our guys moving in the direction that we need to go, to be able to do those things.”
‘No Days Off’
Tagovailoa has already shown the commitment to be great. He’s transformed his body for the second straight offseason, and he’s spent his own money hiring a passing tutor to get better at the fundamentals.
“He’s really embraced that where there’s no days off when you’re in a situation where you’re the highest-paid employee,” McDaniel said.
“If you want to be on a good team, then you better bring everything that you can control, or you should have nothing more than marginal expectations for your team at best if you don’t have that mindset on a daily basis and dictate the terms that you want your teammates to follow.”
Tua certainly is more comfortable leading than he was early in his career. Tackle Terron Armstead, one of Tagovailoa’s best friends on the team, has marveled at Tua’s evolution over the last three years.
“I think it’s been coming with experience, with confidence, with being familiar with the scheme, playmakers guys up front,” Armstead said. “Me and him are super close now and that takes time.
“So his personality is definitely showing more than ever. I was over in Hawaii with him, and I seen it, you know what I mean, before he got paid. So it just, it comes, it comes with time, and you’re seeing, you’re seeing [us] come out and be who we are, him be who he is.”
Standard for a Successful Season
Tagovailoa has come a long way in his time with McDaniel. But together, they still have a long way to go.
Owner Stephen Ross has already laid down the marker. In his mind, the Dolphins are Super Bowl contenders.
We’d just like them to win a playoff game first. It’s been 24 years since the Dolphins reached the Divisional Round. If they don’t (and it’s not because of a Tagovailoa injury), the quarterback will rightly get much of the blame.
Plus, the AFC East is a three-team race, with both the Dolphins and Jets a real threat to end the Bills’ four-year run of supremacy. The best way to win playoff games is to host them, so anything less than a division championship would be a damaging disappointment.
To do all of those things, Tagovailoa needs to be better against the best teams. He lost five of six regular-season games against 2023 playoff teams, which was the No. 1 reason the Dolphins had to play in frozen Arrowhead Stadium in the Wild Card round.
To beat the best teams, you need your best player to play his best late in games. Tagovailoa hasn’t consistently done that.
He has just six fourth-quarter comebacks in 53 career NFL appearances. If he had made one more play in the fourth quarter against the Chiefs, Titans, or Bills last regular season, the entire narrative surrounding him and the 2023 Dolphins would probably be different.
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Forget pretty stats (he’ll have those). Give us big plays late. If he does, everything else will probably take care of itself.
“I think [an increase in expectations] is fair, that’s very natural,” McDaniel said. “You’d have to be completely unaware not to expect [that] external expectations will adjust, but I think it’s important that you focus on your internal expectations because that’s the best way to lend the most powerful results that hopefully satisfy all your friends, fans and every other person.”
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