Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, who just inked a new four-year, $212.4 million deal, is entering the 2024 season with a lot of confidence. Some of that confidence carries over into the way he talks about his NFL experience, including under former Dolphins head coach Brian Flores.
In an interview with “The Dan Le Batard Show” on Monday, the fifth-year quarterback spoke candidly about training with his former coach. Tagovailoa was incredibly candid as he explained the difference between Flores, his former coach, and his current head coach Mike McDaniel.
“To put it simply,” Tagovailoa said, “if you woke up every morning and I told you, ‘You sucked at what you did, you don’t belong here, you don’t belong here, this guy doesn’t belong here, you don’t deserve this.
“And then someone else comes in and says to you, ‘Man, you’re the best candidate for this, you’re accurate, you’re the best, whatever. You’re this, you’re that.’ How would you feel if you listened to one or the other?”
Flores coached Tagovailoa, who was selected fifth overall by Miami in 2020, for his first two years in the league. McDaniel took over as head coach in 2021 after Flores was fired.
Tagovailoa said he has gained more confidence and voice in the period between his rookie season and now, and he attributed that in part to the changes in the coaching staff.
“There’s been a lot of growth from Year 2 to now Year 5,” said Tagovailoa, who said he didn’t feel “mature” enough when he was a rookie to be as blunt as he is now. “I’m not the same person I was last year,” he added.
And now Tagovailoa is opening up about his experiences with Flores and how it affected his perspective on himself and his game.
“You hear it — no matter what it is, the good or the bad — and you hear it more and more, you start to really believe it. I don’t care who you are, you could be the president of the United States. [If] “When you have a horrible person telling you things that you don’t want to hear, or that you probably shouldn’t hear, you’re going to believe that about yourself,” Tagovailoa said.
Before becoming head coach of the Dolphins, Flores spent a decade in various roles with the New England Patriots under Bill Belichick, a coach known for his incredibly blunt and direct nature, with mixed results. Flores, who spent last season as the Minnesota Vikings’ defensive coordinator, filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against the NFL in 2022, which is still pending.
The 26-year-old quarterback said he now feels incredibly comfortable with McDaniel, who encourages him and is also open to his ideas. That comfort hasn’t come easy, as Tagovailoa has had to move past some of those comments Flores put in his head.
“It’s actually been two years of training, not only for me, but for a couple of guys who have been here since my rookie year,” Tagovailoa said.
Tagovailoa played well in his first two seasons, but began to find his place on the team under McDaniel. He had a great season last year, throwing for a career-high 29 touchdowns and a league-leading 4,624 yards.
Tagovailoa enters this season hoping to fix the Dolphins’ playoff woes, which have not advanced past the first round of the playoffs since 2000.
