GOOD NEWS : Another QB will be relocating to Alabama Crimson Tide Football

Miami QB Tua Tagovailoa ‘commanded the game entirely’

Miami quarterback Tua Tagovailoa didn’t have to do too much on Sunday with the Dolphins defense smothering the New York Jets offense. And maybe not too much was expected with Tyreek Hill, the NFL’s leading receiver, sidelined by an ankle injury.

Instead, Tagovailoa completed his first 13 passes, including a 60-yard touchdown throw to wide receiver Jaylen Waddle, as Miami defeated New York 30-0.

For the game, Tagovailoa completed 21-of-24 passes for 224 yards with one touchdown and no interceptions. Tagovailoa has had a better completion percentage than Sunday’s .875 in only one of his 48 NFL starts, when he completed 23-of-26 passes in a 70-20 victory over the Denver Broncos on Sept. 24.

A former West Alabama standout, Hill had 97 receptions for 1,542 yards and 12 touchdowns in Miami’s first 13 games of the 2023 season before sitting out on Sunday.

“It’s a team sport,” Tagovailoa said. “I went out there when 10 was warming up. I went up to him and told him, ‘Dude, if you can’t go, we got you, brother.’ It’s a team sport. It’s going to take all of us. …

“It’s tough not having one of your star guys out there. But as a collective group, it’s like, ‘What’re we going to do? Are we just going to run the ball the entire game? Go action game the entire game?’ No. We shouldn’t change who we are as an offense because one guy’s out. We got a lot of other guys that we trusted and that we believed in to keep on the team, and that’s what happened out there.

Tua Tagovailoa Latest News Today

Waddle stepped into the No. 1 receiver role with eight receptions for 142 yards and one touchdown on Sunday.

Tagovailoa had completed 10 passes for 66 yards when he connected with his former Alabama teammate behind the New York defense to almost double his passing yardage for the game and give Miami a 17-0 lead with 7:42 left in the first half.

“Just me throwing the ball to our playmaker,” Tagovailoa said. “That’s all it was. Jaylen made a play on that, and the result was a touchdown.”

On its first possession of the second half, Miami went for it on fourth-and-5 at the Jets 45-yard line, and Tagovailoa hit Waddle for a 25-yard gain. The quarterback played only one more series before leaving with 11:42 to play and letting backup Mike White finish the game.

“It far from surprised me,” Miami coach Mike McDaniel said of Tagovailoa’s performance. “I could tell all week, there were certain things him and Jaylen Waddle were doing together that I knew they were going to be able to do some explosive stuff, and he really did a great job of playing within the play.

“I think what we’re watching as a team are a bunch of young players really coming into their own, and he’s one of the primary ones—Tua is—because he’s learning from everything. It doesn’t mean everything goes well. I think that’s fake, and that would make me nervous if at this point in the season we hadn’t gone through adversity, just because I know what is coming, so I think I was a great example of him worried about the right stuff, which is his responsibility each and every play. And he definitely commanded the game entirely.”

The Dolphins improved to 10-4, joining the Baltimore Ravens as 10-win teams in the AFC

Miami hosts another 10-win team, the Dallas Cowboys, at 3:25 p.m. CST Dec. 24 in its next game. The Dolphins visit Baltimore on Dec. 31 and close the season with a home game against the Buffalo Bills on Jan. 7.

In its previous game, Miami had a major meltdown and somehow lost to the Tennessee Titans 28-27 on Monday night.

“Everyone knew what we had put out Monday night was embarrassing,” Tagovailoa said, “and it felt weird as we came into the building. One thing we wanted to do was not feel that feeling again. In a way, guys were happy it was a short week and we got to play again and sort of exorcise a lot of the things that we didn’t do right and take the right step forward with winning and really winning the way we did today.”