Miami Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel addressed Tua Tagovailoa’s comments after Sunday’s 29-27 loss against the Los Angeles Chargers, when the veteran quarterback called out teammates for showing up late to player-led meetings or skipping them altogether.
“After a loss as the franchise quarterback, that’s not the forum to displace that,” McDaniel told reporters Monday. “I think he knows that now. There was no ill intention. But a misguided representation of player-orchestrated film sessions.”
Tagovailoa used his postgame presser to call out the team’s leadership, comments that raised eyebrows because the veteran quarterback ostensibly is a part of that leadership equation, but also because he threw three interceptions in the loss.
“I think it starts with the leadership in helping articulate that for the guys and then what we’re expecting out of the guys,” he told reporters. “We’re expecting this—are we getting that? Are we not getting that? We have guys showing up to players-only meetings late, guys not showing up to players-only meetings. There’s a lot that goes into that. Do we have to make this mandatory? Do we not have to make this mandatory? It’s a lot of things of that nature that we’ve got to get cleaned up, and it starts with little things like that.”
Those comments were met with a wave of critique, most notably from a slew of former players:
Tagovailoa, to his credit, did say in his Sunday comments that he needed to be better as well.
“The only place we can go is next week,” he told reporters. “We talk about figuring this out. We talk about getting it together collectively. What are the problems, what are the issues and are they getting fixed? Are they not getting fixed? Why are they not getting fixed? Or if they’re fixed, how are we not allowing it to happen again? Things of that nature. We’ve got to look at the film again, we’ve got to see where we can go. I contributed to a lot of that as well with the three turnovers. You can’t do that and expect to win games.”
The Dolphins are now 1-5 on the season and their 27-year-old quarterback is having a rough season, throwing for 1,213 yards, 11 touchdowns and seven interceptions while completing 69.8 percent of his passes and taking 13 sacks. That has McDaniel on the hot seat, though the Dolphins have remained competitive, with three of their five losses coming by six points or less.
Team culture has been a topic since the offseason, and Tagovailoa’s ill-timed comments will only add more kindling to the subject. Stacking some wins together would certainly go a long way toward shifting that conversation, however.
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