Last season, Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa addressed the difference between coach Brian Flores and coach Mike McDaniel. Tua focused mainly on the fact that McDaniel allows Tua to be his true, authentic self.
Now, after Tua has fully proven his worth to the team with a new contract that pays more than $53 million per year in new money, he’s being far more blunt and candid in his assessment of his two NFL head coaches.
The comments were made to Dan LeBatard. Here they are.
“To put it in simplest terms, if you woke up every morning and I told you you suck at what you did, that you don’t belong doing what you do, that you shouldn’t be there, that this guy should be here, that you haven’t earned this right and then you have somebody else come in and tell you, ‘Dude, you are the best fit for this. Like, you are accurate, you are the best whatever, you are this, you are that,’” Tagovailoa said. “Like, how would it make you feel listening to one or the other? You see what I’m saying? And then you hear it, you hear it. Regardless of what it is, the good or the bad. And you hear it more and more, you start to actually believe that. I don’t care who you are. You could be the president of the United States. If you have a terrible person that’s telling you things you don’t want to hear, or that you probably shouldn’t be hearing, you’re gonna start to believe that about yourself.”
It’s not a surprise that Tua feels that way. It is surprising that he’d say it out loud.
During the 2021 season, Flores was fixated on trading for Deshaun Watson. It nearly happened before the season started. It contributed, we heard at the time, to Tua’s decision to decline a captain designation as Week 1 approached.
It hovered into the season. And the trade would have happened, if Watson had agreed to settle all pending civil lawsuits arising from allegations of sexual misconduct during massage therapy sessions. Then, once the trade deadline came and went without a deal for Watson, Tua started playing better.
Of course, he hadn’t done enough to win over owner Stephen Ross, at least not yet. Ross wanted to swap out Flores and Tua for Sean Payton and Tom Brady, as the significant tampering penalties against Ross and his team proved conclusively.
But then came McDaniel, in 2022. He opted for positive reinforcement, in lieu of the Belichickian beatdown that Flores apparently deployed.
Here’s the reality. Belichick’s “you suck” approach only works with someone who is wired to respond properly to it. Brady was. Tua wasn’t. Aaron Rodgers, as we discussed last week on PFT Live, wouldn’t have been. Which suggests that Belichick wouldn’t have done it to Rodgers.
Regardless, Tua has let loose on Flores, strongly implying when considering the full context that he believes Flores is a “terrible person.” It will be interesting to see if Flores has anything to say in response.
It also will be interesting to see whether Tua ends up being called as a witness in Flores’s lingering wrongful discharge case against the Dolphins, if/when the process ever moves away from square one.