Can Tua Tagovailoa be the Long-Term Solution in Atlanta?

Things certainly fizzled out in Miami for Tua Tagovailoa and the Dolphins over the last 2 years. So much so that the Dolphins released him while on the hook for $54 million of guaranteed money. They’ll also take a salary cap hit of almost $100 million over the next 2 seasons.

So if the Dolphins were so adamant about moving on from Tua that they were willing to take a $100 million cap hit for him to play elsewhere, why should any team be interested in him?

And more specifically, why were the Falcons interested?

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To me, this is a cheap insurance policy for a team that is in flux at the quarterback position right now. Atlanta only had to pay a bag of footballs and some lunch stipends (in NFL terms) to bring Tua over since the Dolphins owe him so much money, similar to what we saw the Vikings do with Kyler Murray.

But in Minnesota, there is a more likely path to Murray being the Vikings’ long-term solution at quarterback. He has a higher ceiling because of his physical ability (mostly his legs), which clearly led to the Vikings thinking that they can get more out of his talents than anyone else has.

With Tua, that ceiling is lower. In fact, we probably already saw it during the 2022-23 seasons. Tua needs the offense to function in a very specific way (a way that Mike McDaniel’s system was absolutely perfect for) in order to be successful.

McDaniel’s offense was based on timing, speed at the skill positions, and Tua getting the ball out as soon as he hit his back foot.

His ability to throw with accuracy and anticipation are extremely high-level. Just look at a couple of these throws:

Notice where his receiver was in his route when Tua made his decision and had just started his throwing motion:

Here’s another example:

Again, look how Tua had already released the ball and his receiver hadn’t even turned his head around yet:

Anticipation is Tua’s superpower, and Mike McDaniel did a lot of things to make sure he could take advantage of it as often as possible. Specifically, he used a ton of motion to make sure defenders couldn’t jam receivers at the line of scrimmage, disrupt the timing of the play, and force Tua to hold the ball:

When it looked good in Miami, it looked really good.

The problem was, if the play didn’t work as designed, Tua had very little ability to win late in the down.

His arm strength and scrambling ability are lacking. The more that defenses found ways to take away his first read and make him hold the ball, the more you saw plays like this: