The Miami Dolphins went 11-6 last season, finishing second in the AFC East and earning a playoff birth, eventually falling to the Kansas City Chiefs during Super Wild Card Weekend. Quarterback Tua Tagovailoa led the offense with an NFL-best 4,624 yards while earning his first Pro Bowl selection. Tagovailoa also threw for 29 touchdowns against 14 picks, similar to his MVP-caliber 25-touchdown season the year prior. After a slow start to his NFL career (26 passing touchdowns from 2020 to 2021), Tagovailoa has turned the corner since Miami hired head coach Mike McDaniel. The Dolphins opted for McDaniel in 2022 after parting ways with former frontman Brian Flores after three seasons.
The defensive-minded Flores, who operated as the team’s bench boss when Miami selected Tagovailoa with the fifth pick in the 2020 NFL draft, struggled to develop the passer, mainly leading to his dismissal in favor of McDaniel, an offensive coach from the San Francisco 49ers. Late last weekend, news surfaced that if Flores got his way during the 2020 draft, Tagovailoa would have landed elsewhere in the NFL.
Brian Flores: Wanted Jordan Love, Not Tua Tagovailoa in 2020 NFL Draft
After an abysmal 5-11 season in 2019, the offensively-challenged Miami Dolphins selected Alabama Crimson Tide quarterback Tua Tagovailoa with the fifth overall pick of the subsequent NFL draft. Miami won ten games the following season despite receiving just eleven passing touchdowns in eleven games from their rookie passer. The plan was always for the Dolphins to select a signal-caller early in the 2020 NFL draft. However, according to Omar Kelly of the Miami Herald, then-head coach Brian Flores wanted to pick an offensive tackle, not Tagovailoa, with the fifth overall selection.
The real story – I'M TOLD, never fully confirmed – is that Flores wanted to draft an OT (not sure which one) and then come back with Love at 18.
Flores was never fully onboard with Tua for various reasons, and @Safid_Deen story about how he roughed Tua up at the combine verifies…
— Omar Kelly (@OmarKelly) July 14, 2024
More importantly, Flores wanted to burn the 18th overall selection on Utah State quarterback Jordan Love. Instead, Miami took Tagovailoa with the fifth pick and offensive tackle Austin Jackson from USC with the 18th selection, leading to Love slipping to the 26th pick and the Green Bay Packers. Per Kelly, Flores eyed a quarterback that could handle tough coaching, something the bench boss tried on Tagovailoa during the NFL Combine, with less-than-ideal results.
Tua Tagovailoa: Career Comparison to Jordan Love
Since the departure of Brian Flores in 2022, Tua Tagovailoa has performed as a top-ten quarterback in the NFL. Tagovailoa has thrown for 8,172 yards, 54 touchdowns, and 22 interceptions across his past 30 starts. The Alabama product owns a 102.9 quarterback rating during that stretch. More importantly, Miami is 19-11 across his past 30 starts. The most significant criticism of Tagovailoa since 2022 remains his ability to perform against tough competition, especially in hostile environments. In last year’s road loss against the Kansas City Chiefs in the postseason, he went 20-of-39 for 199 yards with an interception and a touchdown.
Meanwhile, Jordan Love, the apparent preferred option for Flores in the 2022 NFL Draft, sat behind future Hall of Famer Aaron Rodgers from 2020 to 2022. In his first year as a starter last season, Love threw for 4,159 yards, 32 touchdowns, and 11 picks. Love played at an elite level from Week 11 onward, throwing for 18 touchdowns with only one interception. Love also engineered an epic first-round playoff upset against the heavily favorited Dallas Cowboys, going 16-of-21 for 272 yards and three touchdowns.
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