Dave Hyde: Do you believe in Tua? Sixth year is defining one

Tua Tagovailoa’s sixth year as the Miami Dolphins quarterback isn’t some final code-cracking of who he is or last incursion into what he can do.

There’s no identity crisis here. Everyone knows his talent by now, where he succeeds and what he lacks.

This year is simply about whether all that’s enough. You can talk about cornerback holes and the lack of offensive line depth, but everyone knows a quarterback can spray perfume on most any problem if he’s good enough.

Do you believe in Tua?

Believing isn’t important by now, though. Showing is. Performing in a way to be worth the injury concerns that accompany him.

Every career has a defining moment and this sixth year is it with Tagovailoa, considering the organizational timelines around him. Either he succeeds this season, meaning the Dolphins succeed, meaning coach Mike McDaniel and general manager Chris Grier succeed with him and return next season or …

Tua sinks with them.

They all get swept out. The Dolphins start a new course. And embark on the next four-year period. Ugh.

Everyone knows the stakes of this year beyond wins and losses. You can’t ignore how this is the climate any more than you could ignore rain in your face.

Tua is the centerpiece of this era’s decisions, too. What he’s good at he’s great at: anticipation, vision, accuracy, timing, release, rhythm, communication with receivers.

But what Tua can’t do, he really can’t do: improvise, make plays with his feet, use arm strength to attack defenses’ edges and invent an option when chaos happens, like it so often does against the good defenses.

McDaniel built Tua a rhythm passing game around those strengths and the speed of receivers Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle. It worked for a while, too.

The Dolphins had the No. 1 offense in 2023 thanks to an off-the-charts opening six games averaging 498 yards of offense (the final 11 games averaged 348.2 yards, on par with the 347.3 yards that ranked 18th last year).

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The kryptonite appeared when defenses began using press coverage and two-deep safeties to take away Tua’s quick passing and ability to lob balls deep.

The Dolphins’ running game was broken last year, too. That includes Tua, considering health concerns coupled with lack of speed prevent him running like many quarterbacks.

“The linebackers and secondary sit back in coverage knowing he’s not going to run,” an NFL defensive coach said this summer. “And that’s not something you can change, because they don’t want him to run.”

Tagovailoa’s numbers make any case you want. Like this: He has a winning record as a starter each of his five seasons for a cumulative 38-24 (compared to 9-13 without him).

Or like this: He’s 1-8 against Buffalo and a combined 13-0 against the New York Jets and New England Patriots in the AFC East. That underlines how his Dolphins bully bad teams and lose to good ones.

There are plenty of narratives about Tua, but the Dolphins’ internal narrative is that Tagovailoa is plenty good enough if a running game can be folded into this offense. Or maybe that’s the internal fib. Again, that’s what this year is about.

The Dolphins would be a defeatist organization if they saw it any other way right now, considering their continued investment in Tua from the No. 5 pick in 2020 to the four-year, $212.4 million contract extension last year.

So, the question is how to help him succeed. That’s their answer, too. Help. McDaniel’s offense had an identity crisis last year far more than the quarterback did.

The Dolphins ranked 31st in short-yardage plays and couldn’t run enough to attack the two-deep-safeties the Dolphins got more than any other team.

McDaniel and Grier invested in two new guards and got two big backs to correct that. One of those backs, Alexander Mattison, was lost in preseason to injury, so the question is if sixth-round rookie Ollie Gordon II can turn a summer of promise into a season of production.

The larger question is how much a better running game helps Tagovailoa’s passing game. Because the Dolphins identity remains the big money spent on Tagovailoa, Hill and Waddle.

If you wonder whether a quarterback can win big after six years of watching, don’t you have your answer?

That question was asked about Ryan Tannehill after his sixth Dolphins season in 2018. He moved on to Tennessee, where he found better talent, a run-oriented system and went to the AFC title game.

Now it’s asked about Tagovailoa. It’s not a question of who he is. Five years have provided that answer. This sixth year is whether with some surrounding help and good heath whether that will be good enough.

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