No, Tua Tagovailoa is not going to be this year's Josh Rosen and get ousted by his organization after just one season. Despite hot-take scuttlebutt that the Dolphins should move away from the young quarterback after a less-than-eye-popping rookie campaign, GM Chris Grier met with reporters on Tuesday for his end-of-year presser and reiterated that Tagovailoa will be the club's quarterback heading into 2021.
"Tua, I'm very happy with. He's our starting quarterback," said Greir, who also noted that he "thought Tua did a great job of working himself through the whole process."
At the start of the 2020 season, one of the more fascinating storylines could be found in Miami where the Dolphins seemed to be on the doorstep of a new era under center after drafting Tagovailoa with the No. 5 overall pick earlier in the spring. That said, Brian Flores did hold out his first-round rookie as he continued to recover from the devastating hip injury he suffered at Alabama in late 2019. Folks had to wait until Week 8 for Flores to eventually name Tagovailoa as the starter over Ryan Fitzpatrick, which ended up being a bit surprising after the veteran had the team at 3-3 heading into the bye.
In his debut season, Tagovailoa didn't exactly light the NFL stage of fire like his fellow first-round classmates Joe Burrow and Justin Herbert. He averaged just 6.3 yards per attempt and there was a case to be made that the offense looked a bit better when Fitzpatrick was under center.
After naming Tagovailoa the stater and as the Dolphins moved into serious playoff contention, Flores even implemented what could be called a quarterback bullpen and sent out Fitzpatrick on a number of key late-game situations while the rookie was dismissed to the bench. While that proved to be beneficial for the Dolphins and kept them in the playoff picture all the way until Week 17, taking out the quarterback that is supposed to be the face of the franchise and headliner in those critical moments was hardly a great look.
At times, Miami play-callers seemed to limit Tagovailoa from throwing downfield and largely protected the rookie by deploying short passes over the middle- and high-percentage wide receiver screens. That was on full display in the first half of Miami's blowout loss to the Bills in Week 17 that effectively eliminated them from the playoffs. In that opening half before being forced to open up the offense to try and make a comeback, Tagovailoa averaged just 4.68 yards per attempt.
The fact that the coaching staff was seemingly holding the rookie back brought with it questions about whether or not he is the true answer at quarterback going forward. That talk only increased once Miami locked in the No. 3 overall pick thanks to the Houston Texans, whose first-rounder they own. That selection puts them right in the sweet spot to select almost any of this year's group of young quarterbacks if they wanted to -- however, Grier is making it crystal clear and squashing any offseason buzz that they may turn that way by planting his flag with Tagovailoa going forward.
