Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa didn’t agree with the decision to go on injured reserve after his third career concussion, which he sustained on Sept. 12.
Tagovailoa will return to the field on Oct. 26 against the Arizona Cardinals—over a month after he exited a Week 2 game against the Buffalo Bills. The Dolphins slid to 2–4 in Tagovailoa’s absence with Skylar Thomspon followed by Tyler Huntley and Tim Boyle.
“What I do know is that I think the team did what was best in the interest of me,” Tagovailoa told reporters on Oct. 21. “Knowing that I’m a competitor, and given what the doctors have told me that having a substantial amount of time to rest and recover would have been good for me, I think they did what was best in terms of protecting myself from myself.”
While the NFL doesn’t require injured reserve for players in concussion protocol, Tagovailoa’s third concussion in less than three seasons merited caution by the Dolphins. In addition, retirement speculation for Tagovailoa surfaced again as it did after the 2022 season.
“Well, how much risk do we take when we get up in the morning to go drive to work? Get into a car crash, I don’t know,” Tagovailoa said. “Every time we all suit up, we’re all taking a risk that we could potentially get hurt, whether it’s a concussion, a broken bone, anything.”
“You get up off of the bed the wrong way, you potentially could risk you spraining your ankle,” he said. “There’s just risk in any and everything, and I’m willing to play the odds, that’s it.”
Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel, who officially confirmed Tagovailoa’s next start on Friday, said the team is comfortable with Tagovailoa coming back. McDaniel added that Tagovailoa met with “a long list of medical experts, and zero of them recommended” retirement for the fifth-year, former Alabama star.
“So that means 100 percent of them were supporting the continued journey and I think that is as easy of a relay as possible,” McDaniel told reporters. “I think there’s a lot of things out there, a lot of—so I can’t tell you how many people or if many people asked him, but I know that’s what drove his confidence is making his decision in step with medical experts who fully support what he’s doing. So I think everybody feels good about that.”
The Dolphins could get back to higher scoring offense and winning, too. Miami averaged 29.2 points per game for second in the league last year when Tagovailoa started all 17 games, but 2024 didn’t start off overly promising with just 20 points in a Week 1 over the Jacksonville Jaguars followed by a 10-point output against the Bills before Tagovailoa’s concussion.
“We never stepped out on the field when Tua was our starting quarterback and just won the game because of Tua,” McDaniel said. “We won the game with Tua and there’s 10 other players every down with him and then there’s 60 to 75 plays where our defense is on the field and then there’s the 30 plays that special teams is on the field.”
“So I think the frustration of each and every game that we haven’t won, the frustration of football not being to our standard in different places, that affords you if you’re going to go through it, if you’re going to experience that failure, you have to make it purposeful,” he added.
Dolphins offensive coordinator Frank Smith emphasized that it will take time to get the offense going full throttle with Tagovailoa again. The 2023 Pro Bowler returned to practice for the first time on Thursday.
“It’s all of us together to take in the game plan for the attack and making sure we’re all connected on where we expect guys to be and how we see the defense and the timing at which we’ll operate and then connecting ourselves together,” Smith said. “So I don’t think it’s necessarily just him, it’s now all of us because each game plan is different for the defense. I think that’ll be the whole part of the offense, just getting the communication that is necessary for us to work together to accomplish something.”
