Why Did the Dolphins Bench Tua?
By: Joshua Camara
During the 4th quarter, Tua Tagovailoa was benched for Ryan Fitzpatrick. The Dolphins were down 20–10. Tua had replaced Fitzpatrick after the Dolphins had started their hot streak.
The decision to bench Tua came from Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores. Flores had decided to name Tua Tagovailoa the starter after a dolphins bye week, where he led the Dolphins to wins over the Rams and Cardinals. The benching decision seemed to be odd, especially after two wins a row and only trailing by 10.
With a young quarterback like Tua, they have to face adversity and show that they can comeback to win the game. With a comeback or not, it was Tua’s first poor performance and would be his first loss as a starter. When I was in, we couldn’t really get things going,” Tagovailoa said. “Coach felt like it was best to put Fitz in to give us a spark. I feel that the decision to remove Fitzpatrick as the starter was questionable to begin with. The Dolphins were surging and had a 2 game win streak with over 74 points being scored. Benching Fitzpatrick at the time was questionable only because it had looked like the Dolphins had finally started to turn things around and that making a change to quarterback could have been disruptive to the team. Then making another quarterback change during the middle of the game seemed to be confusing for the team.
Giving your young quarterback the chance to face the music and play through the struggles is important to learning the hardships of the game. Taking him out and letting him watch the backup perform to provide “a spark” is sort of a slap in the face.
Tua’s stats compared to Fitzpatricks stats were not far off. Tua Finished the game with 83 passing yards, a touchdown and no turnovers for a quarterback rating of 81.9. Fitzpatrick finished with 117 passing yards, an interception, no touchdown and a passer rating of only 61.6. The stats showed that there was no spark from the change.
Moving forward the Dolphins have got to make sure they stay consistent with their quarterback. The Dolphins need to contain confidence in their young quarterback and should not handicap him at a sign of struggle.
