The Ringer NFL Show - The Play Sheet [VIDEO]: What Do We Do With Tua Tagovailoa?

Episode Date: January 10, 2024

With a potential contract extension looming for Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa this offseason, The Ringer's Ben Solak takes a look at his recent play and identifies some weaknesses in his game after a tough loss to the Buffalo Bills. Mike McDaniel's offensive system has been a boon to Tua's game, but how should we evaluate his skill set as a QB after this season, and how much cap room does he deserve moving forward? Watch 'The Play Sheet' on YouTube or Spotify every Wednesday at 8 a.m. PT. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Howdy. I'm Ben Solak. This is the play sheet. It's a weekly episode we do here. It's a video pod. So you got to click it in the Spotify app, click on the episode, watch the film, and enjoy. The opening script. What to do about Tua? Pretty good. When the year started, everybody, and by everybody I mean, like, giant football nerds like me, we're really interested to see what the second year of Mike McDaniel and Tua was going to look like in Miami. That first year, the 2022 season, that was the new season. storm, right? That was the offensive innovation. It felt like a like a 2017 moment, a Shanahan McVeigh moment where this style of offense was going to take over the league. It was going

to proliferate everywhere. But that would only be the case if in year two, Mike McDaniel could stay ahead of the curve and Tuatung of Iloa could improve as a player. Early doors, it looked like both had happened. Our first episode of the season, week one was about the Dolphins 36 to 34 win over the Los Angeles Chargers, a defense that had stymied the 2022 version of this offense. There were schematic innovations from Mike McDaniel, but critically, there were signs of improved play, a step forward from Tuatua. Let's refresh and rewind. We're going to snap the football. It's in a little back in motion and we're at the top of our drop. What do we got? We are running that same in-breaking route, man. I mean, this is the money route and the chargers know it's the money

route. The chargers ended up dropping Derwin James deep middle. That's Derwin right here. And then the two safeties stepped down and they're operating as robbers. Their whole goal is to take away that intermediate middle of the field, take away that area that Tua wants to throw the football to. So this route's breaking right here, right? Tattoo this guy at the 35-yard line. Maybe you pick up a first down. And Tua thinks about it, right? We're going to, we're going to watch, watch Tua get to the bottom of his drop and start to

separate the hands. You see him right there. Separate those hands. He wants, he's thinking about throwing this route, but the receiver's falling down, right? Now, Tua is not, not throwing it even if the receiver stays up. because he's already made the decision. That's the safety stepping down. So firstly, we have the decision not to throw this, which is great.

Even if the receiver stood, it's doubly great because the receiver fell down. So now it's third and ten, and the chargers took away your first read. Typically against Tua, this is ballgame, right? This is done. Watch Tua. Climb up in the pocket. You can see that head flip over to Tariq, and then this throw. On the move, Khalil Mack reaching a paw out for you.

45 yards down the field. I mean, in the bread basket. That play right there had me just unbelievably hype for that 2023 version of Tua. That play saw him get off of an initial read and get to his second guy on the concept. Uncork, a beautiful vertical ball, a ball that often challenges his arm strength. And critically, it saw him succeed from a pressure pocket, everything that he needed to do better. I really hoped that that play was indicative of more plays to come. That would continue.

And I had to remind myself again, that's a one game sample. We can't get too excited, but man. And again, it's week one, and we have to, we got to try to remain calm. And I'm talking to me, as much than talking to you, not to get over my skis to wait and see what Tua looked like over a larger sample. Well, we have that large sample now. Here's Tua's EPA per dropback when pressured in every game so far this season. You can see the excellent start against the Chargers and then in that week three, uproarious

performance against the Broncos. Since then, not as good. In fact, when you look at quarterbacks across the league, Tua has the most. most dramatic negative effect on his pressure dropbacks relative to all of his dropbacks. Pressure hurts Tua more than pretty much any starting quarterback in the league. Let's forget about pressures. Let's forget about blitzes. Let's just look at those plays in which Tua had to hold the ball for more than two and a half

seconds. These are plays where that quick game, that dart style of Mike McDaniel's offense suffered for some reason. Tua had to hang back there in the pocket, make decisions, get off of first reads. And again, we see, stronger to start the season, deteriorated over time. So Tuel was strong to start the season because he'd improved. Absolutely, he'd worked hard in the offseason. He deserves credit for that.

But largely, the offense was better because Mike McDaniel had some new tricks, some new flares, schematic stuff that defenses weren't ready for. Only in 2022, when the offense was totally new, it took defenses like 12, 13 weeks to catch up. This year, they already had a year's worth of film. It didn't take them 12, 13 weeks. It only took them like 4 or 5 to catch up. So if defenses catch up to the scheme,

it puts more on the quarterback to perform, There's more percentage of the pies on the quarterback's plate. He has to carry more of the offense. Such was the case in Week 18 against the Buffalo Bills, division on the line at home. This is a defense now that knew they were going to face you twice coming into the season. So schematically, they worked really hard to deal with Mike McDaniel, to deal with your nonsense. And you're walking into this game. No any most are in the backfield.

No Jaylon Waddle at wide receiver. Your offensive line's been enduring a carousel of injuries. Welcome to the league, baby. Blugman NFL, it ain't always perfect. You got to deal with an injured team. You got to deal with a great defense that's curate. to beat you and you got to deal with high expectations. This is franchise quarterback football right here.

And when Tua was put in the same circumstances in which he excelled in week one against the chargers, he struggled in week 18. Let's go to play action. I want to start talking vertical balls, right? These deep downfield arcing throws because numbers will tell you that Tua's like sufficient on these throws, that he's good in the league. It's not there on the film. Like his receivers just solve a lot of problems for him and his arm strength causes issues.

And it has to be acknowledged on the film. It's there. You can't argue with it. They got Tyreek Hill in this little H-back alignment, which is one of the new things are doing this year. They're going to motion him and then snap the ball with him in motion as he's kind of stepping in that number two receiver alignment. He's going to go vertical, and they're going to get a vertical route here outside from the back, and then it's going to be underneath route right here. They end up with an ideal defensive look for this idea, right? Because the bill is going to rotate to cover three with this safety rotating deep, this safety stepping down, and then you go deep third here and a deep third here.

So who is now responsible for this Tyreek vertical? It's going to be Benford here, the deep third player who's starting already out way outside, right? He's starting to be far outside of this route. And then this safety also has to come help. And he's coming from the other side of the field. This is the optimal look that you could be getting here. This is ideal, right? You see, as Tyreeks going down the field, this safety steps down.

This safety wants to help, and Benford wants to get connected to the route. I mean, there is no one who can impede Tyreek on his way down the field. He got a free release on the vertical route. And two of those, right? Two is at the top of his drop. This ball's going to Tyreek on third and seven every day of the week. You got to hang this thing out there. You have to miss Tyreek Hill long.

You cannot miss him short. Firstly, if you miss him short, you're throwing defenders back into the concept. You're throwing defenders into the route. If you miss him long, the only guy was getting is Tyreek Hill. You just, you have to overshoot him and then trust that Tyreek can get under the ball. Firstly, why are we patting the baby in the pocket, right? What's what's the little double tap on the ball here? just hitching us on cork it.

See, see the hesitation in his feet? Why are we hitching twice? Just throw out, brother. So you just laying on your back foot, one hitch and launch this thing. But he doesn't. And then he feels like he has to beat the safety. And this is dramatically underthrown, right? You say, oh, no, Tyree killed a chance.

No, right here, this ball needs to be upfield. It cannot be dying at the 20s. It needs to be getting to the 15. Hit Tyree can stride. So the vertical routes are a problem. This is two weeks ago against the Cowboys. First play of the game, it's the same thing. Tyreek here is the outside receiver.

but this is we're going to get motion right here he's going to end up being the number two he's going to be on a vertical route and again the cowboy is going to drop the safety rotate to cover three right you so this is same look this is the first play of the game okay snap the football again there's like a hesitation in the pocket and this time michael parsons is coming to like you know just ruin everything the way micah does oh but it's still a good ball catchable ball tyreeks should have caught it yeah tariff should have caught it it's also not accurate right here which you you have to get this ball this way you have to be pulling tyreek away from this corner and assuming that he's going to outrun the safety to the ball right hang this thing up in the air he's going to beat the safety deep take him away from this corner don't throw him back into this corner, right? You're now forcing him to catch this on the wrong shoulder.

He's got to lean away from coverage. It made the catch a lot more difficult. So even like, it's a catchable throw, I should have caught it. That's only because Tyreek usually makes those incredible catches. That's still not an accurate ball. Now, absolutely worth acknowledging that on the very next play, right, second down, they snap it. They go Jamlin Waddle and isolated on the outside and two puts like excellent vertical ball on him, right? So he is capable making these throws. We saw him make it against the chargers. We see it make it right here against the Cowboys. But there is way too much variance in the ball placement, way too much risk, right? We saw an interception be generated and, oh, it's an arm puns, 40 yards down the field. Still,

we should be house-calling that. That should be six when we get Tyreek Hill with a free release off-the-line scrimmage vertically. We should be scoring on that play and too often misses these throws. Now, last thing on the vertical throws. And this, this is like maybe the most meaningful thing to me. You're going to be erratic on them. They're not your best throw. Whatever. In an offense in which we run a lot of this in breaking stuff, right? And an offense at which we're really good to run in the football and we do it at these condensed formations, all that's going to force safeties to play lower, right? All that's going to force safeties to play in this area of the field because they want to take away this route. We have to be willing to punish that by throwing

the vertical. We can't say no to the vertical, especially when it's Tyreek Hill on a free release. Like this offense gets Tyreek on on free, unpressed releases, moving with speed at the snap. It's cracked. It's hacking. It's unbelievable. You can't say no to it when you get it, which this money play for the dolphins, right? They're on the time. Tyreek's in a common motion. It's going to become the new outside receiver and then he's going to go vertical. They're just going to run that little glance route right here, right? That's running back right there. That's a Devon A Shane. And then at the snap, this tight end goes and sifts across, right? They get the sift. They get the glance and they get the wheel. This is like their most.

common RPO play action pass they run this all the time it snapped the football was to a C so we're motioning out here this tight end is going to ole this blocker and move to the flat initially like okay like that looks like it's going to be open for us this is probably going to get mucked up right this is Nichols playing with inside leverage Tyreek here is in a foot race with Benford who has like a four yard advantage which is basically nothing and then the safety is remember coming from this outside hash so this runs to me right Right now, Tua is setting to throw this, and he absolutely unequivocally should. Like, oh, it looks like the corners on top of him.

It's Tyreek Hill. No. We like, this isn't as clean of a window as the other ones, right? The safety is closer and the corner's more upfield. This still is a throw vertical to me. This is an absolutely hang this thing upfield and have Tyreek run underneath it. And then Tua denies it, resets to the tight end and it's a two-yard gain. But just watch, just watch Tyreek.

You got to throw it. You got to, got to, got to, got to, go to throw this. And Tyreek turns off the Jets a little bit. I'm guessing that he, seeing Benford on top of him, knows who is not going to throw this. But to me right here, this is, this ball should be upfield for Tyreek. So it's one thing to be missing the throws. And it's another thing to be saying no to them when they are, in my opinion, NFL open. We have to be, in the structure of this offense, when we get a safety this low and this leverage for Tyree kill, we got to throw this again and again.

Yes, you got picked off on it. Throw it again. because it's a 75-80-yard touchdown if you just hit it. You got to throw this. I think the vertical routes are so important to talk about because structurally, again, if you're going to be so good at these in-breakers, which the dolphins get more out of these in-breaking routes,

these glances and these digs than any other offense does in the league, you have to be able to punish it somehow. And right now the dolphins, for all the juice they get out of the squeeze from those in-breaking routes, those play-action in-breakers, the necessary counterpunch of that vertical route down the field, they don't have. They're still meat on the bone. And that's on their good stuff. When you get them out of their good stuff, when you force them structurally or down in distance wise or pressure and blitz looks wise to get into a different concept, that's really where the offense and particularly

Tua starts to fall apart. All right, this is third and seven, fourth quarter, not the final drive, the drive before it, the penultimate drive. All right? And it's six and a half minutes left. You're down by seven. You'd like to score on this drive. You don't want to have to go earn another one. A pre-snap, dolphins are in empty and they're going to send the tight end emotion to the outside. Bills are confused, right? Bills are having a whole conversation here. Second level players are talking. Looking like, oh, what is who's going here? And then they move Jordan Poir, okay, tremendous. We end up with a clear blitz look, right? They have seven on the line and there's five in protection. So what the dolphins are doing here is they're full sliding the protection to the right.

They're worried about all the rushers there. And Tua, you're expecting at least five to come, right? Maybe two players drop and then they get a single high safety, they play some sort of cover one. or more likely one player drops to this three receiver sides. They need an additional player there. So one of these guys drops. And then they bring six. And when they bring six, they're bringing one more than you can account for, right?

You only have five in protection. So we're going to full slide this to the right. You expect to be hot off the left. You expect to open to the left side and replace the blitzer. Rule for the quarterback, wherever the blitz comes from, you have to throw that side of the field. You have to replace the blitzer. That's what the voiding coverage is going to be.

Pre-snap, that's what we expect. It plays out as we expected, right? They bring six, one more than we can handle. and so now we have to open to left side and throw to this side. We have Tyreek Hill going vertical. The tight end is going to be hot underneath right now. Remember, this is the line to gain, third and seven. This ball absolutely unequivocally has to go to the tight end.

This is an unacceptable decision from Tua. You are throwing this vertical from Tariq Hill here. That's the ball location. It's one yard in front of a flat putted defender, which I understand is getting past the sticks. And Tariq and Tarek and Tua, like, the chemistry is nuts. The fact that like Tarek turns for this and then is ready to catch it and almost catches it.

It's very impressive. But structurally, you have to throw this. Right? Hit Durham Smyth in stride. He is going to contact Christian Benford right around the 35-yard line. He's going to win that contact. He's going to have mobility.

He's going to have momentum. And he's going to finish through contact, pick up a first down. Like this is, the read here is extremely clear. You have to throw this to Smyth. I'm all for force-feeding into your stars. This is the wrong read from Tua on a critical down against the blitz look.

Wrong read. All right, now we're on the final drive. First and 10 at the 40, no timeouts, minute and a half left concept. We're going to motion the back out, a little bumper motion. And then we're going to get a smash, right? We're going to get a high, low read here on the outside. Back's going to be to the flat. That's our look there to the two receivers side.

That's Tyree kill at the top. Three receiver side. We got Cedric Wilson running this seam route, this divide, right? And then we're going to go outbreaking around here from the tight end, and Barris is on the shallow. He's underneath fast. This is our concept. Initially, we're looking like too high, right?

And against too high, you can throw the seven cut. You can. It's a tough throw, right? Because what you're going to get, as we run this, is you're going to get sale technique from Christian Benford here on the outside. Sale technique from this corner, he's going to put his butt into the sideline. He's going to try to sink underneath this seven cut, right? So he's taking away your ability to throw this hard and fast, right, right underneath right now.

So you have to throw this a little bit further up field, and that's going to pull you into this safety. So you can throw this. You got to throw it with timing. You got to throw it with velocity. What you can't do in the pocket now is, climb as if there's pressure when there's none, right? I do not understand what to his feeling right here that makes him think he can't just land

on his back foot, hitch and drive. Like, what are we running from? We are running into pressure. I think this is a bad mistake right here in terms of managing the pocket. Now, against the charges, we saw him make this crazy good throw while on the move climbing up in the pocket, right? And it's okay, out of structure and whatever. So here we're out, we're throwing the move in the pocket now.

we're late to this ball. So we have to drive this thing. This sucker has to be on a line right now and take Tyreek a little bit away from the corner, but then hit him in the numbers. What we can't do is this thing can't float because it's going to give the safety so much time to get in and the play, right?

Because we have enough room to throw this because the safety is playing so deep. Again, in respect for Tyreek speed. So you have to drill him with this ball. You have to hit him fast before the corner before the safety. This can't float. And so we made the throw harder for ourselves

by overreacting to a pressure that didn't even exist. And then we threw the wrong ball because we're throwing on the move and we're outside of structure. The other thing that's irritating is that if we're doing our homework right at the snap, right?

We're checking the safeties. This safety drops, right? And that boundary safety stays too deep. And so when we have this safety drop below and this safety stays deep, we should ask ourselves about this rat right here. Right?

Because right now there's no post safety. There's no middle of field safety. What they did is they dropped the nickel rotated to Tampa 2, bringing the safety down because they're worried about this route, because that's the route you worry about with the dolphins. But if we're doing our homework and we see this safety say wide

and this safety drop down, we should start thinking about this, right? Which usually is not in the concept for you, but you can get there, you can alert there if you want, and it's open. But because we didn't manage the pocket correctly, we can never get there, and now we're forcing the ball to Tyree Kill again. It was an achievable window, but we hit him with the wrong throw.

Okay, next play. Second and 10, minute 17, no timeouts. We're going to miss that first in 10. Let's get back to it. Second and 10. We're going to get a little high-low stretch, right? We're going to get this drive crosser here. We're going to get the shallow there.

Backs out to the flat. We're going to go motion with barrios. He's going to run a little pivot route. And then we have Chase Claypool right here running this corner. All right. Initially, bills are too high. Makes sense. We're going to get a little motion and snap the football.

This ends up being two man. Right. We are locked up and man coverage across the board with two deep safeties. Now, one thing that is worth knowing, these two defensive players exchange these two routes after the motion, right? And so we'll see the leverage they play with here. inside and upfield inside and upfield

see the leverage they have inside of their responsibilities and upfield from them why? Because they're taking away these routes, right? These are the routes you take away from the dolphins.

You don't let them have this. We did the placement on this in 2022, Chargers versus Dolphins, inside and upfield leverage against this motion. So the response is going to be all right, let's run an outbreaking route, right?

Let's run this corner route into the sideline. So Mike McGiangel told too, I said, hey, if they play with that inside up field leverage and we have an outbreaking route dialed up, you throw that outbreaking route, it's going to be great. The problem is they are too deep. They have two deep safeties. And there's no Tyreek Hill on this side of the field to make this safety line up freaking over here, right? Like this is Chase Claypole, Braxton Berries, and Durham Smite. So he doesn't have to play as deep

as he usually does. So you right now are going to try to throw an outbreaking route. There's a deep half safety over here. There's nothing else vertical threatening him. Right. There's nothing that he needs to worry about respecting like maybe this, but there's nothing for him to fear, except for the only vertical route that's coming his way. And initially on it, he has outside leverage, right? He is outside leverage on this route right here. You can't throw this. You can't.

It's not open. We got inside and now he's underneath and we have upfield and outside. Which is like, okay, like he's a little bit disconnected, but he is flat footed and there's nothing threatening him vertical. He's no momentum right now, right? That's like, oh, you know, it's taking him down the field. Like he's currently running this way. No, he's flat footed.

He's standing. here. You can't throw this, right? And like Claypool runs the route like it's a corner. Tua kind of wants him to run it more like it's a flat route. It's a straight out route. It's flat to line of scrimmage. I don't really think the communication matters too much. You cannot throw this ball into this coverage. Of all the routes on the field, it is the one that is most never open. It is the fifth best out of the five routes. You have got to throw this. Right? And okay, minute 17, you have no timeouts. You want to thrown to the sideline, I understand that. But if the safety is going to be this deep and you're going to have inside leverage,

hit him here, he gets tackled right here, walk up spite the football. First and 10 from the 30 yard line, 50, six seconds left. This is not processing. If you're processing, you know that you can't throw this route. Like if you're thinking of real time on the field, you're never throwing this. Anyway, it gets picked. Bad route from Claypool, but you can't throw this. Now, just as you don't want to overreact to a one game week one sample against the

Chargers, you don't want to overreact to a week 18 one game sample. against the bills. Don't let the highs get too high. Don't let the lows get too low. The truth of the player is somewhere in the middle. And the truth on Tua remains what it has pretty much always been for last two years. He plays in an unbelievable system with unbelievable talent. And when those things start to fall away, when defenses can take away some of the systemic help or when a matchup players get injured and the speed on the field isn't the same, Tua struggles to account for the deficiencies. He struggles to fill in the gaps the way you'd like for a franchise quarterback to do. And that really is the question. A franchise quarterback.

question. Look at the 2022 quarterback class. Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert, Jalen Hertz, these guys have gotten major contract extensions. Jordan Love is almost certainly next up to the plate with how he's performed for the Packers this year. Tua has yet to get that deal. He's approaching his fifth year option for the 2024 season and after that he's not signed. The Dolphins have to answer the question. Ideally this offseason, maybe you can push it one more off season. Do we want to give this guy a mega quarterback deal? You don't want to answer that question off of one week 18 game against the bills. It's not fair to say he can't pay Tua because he was bad against the bills. It is fair to say that over the last two years,

Tua has had lots of opportunities to elevate this offense, to bring more to the table than just to be the point-and-shoot game manager Mike McDaniel robot on the field that just says, where's Tire Kail? I'm going to chuck it near him. And time and time again, Tua has shown that he struggles to elevate. He struggles to bring that additional aspect to the offense. He struggles to account for the gaps when they show up because of injury, because of schematic issues.

it's hard to argue for Tua as a $50 million quarterback. It just is. He has another season. He's got another season. He's got another season with Tyrie Kill and with Waddle with a healthy offensive line. But Hill's going to be a year older. The league is going to be a year smarter on McDaniels' offenses. It's not going to get easier from here.

It's going to get harder. And eventually, come contract time, the Dolphers are going to have to make tough decision. And that'll do it for us here on the play sheet. Thank you so much for watching our third Tua episode in two years of doing this. Hope you've enjoyed them all. Hope you enjoyed the season. We did, we 18, regular season's done.

We're gonna be doing episodes all postseason. So make sure you rate review and subscribe. Make sure you thank Cory McConnell for producing. All right. And I'll catch you next week.