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Tua Tagovailoa didn’t hold back when asked to describe the difference between having a coach who believes in him, compared to one who didn’t.
The Miami Dolphins quarterback has flourished in two seasons with Mike McDaniel, so much so that he was rewarded this year with a four-year, $212.4 million extension. He had a far different experience with Brian Flores, his coach for the first two seasons of his career.
In an interview with “The Dan LeBatard Show” that was aired Monday, Tagovailoa said he began to believe he didn’t belong as an NFL quarterback under Flores and McDaniels has had to train that out of him the past two seasons.
“To put it in simplest terms, if you woke up every morning and I told you, ‘you suck at what you did, that you don’t belong doing what you do, that you shouldn’t be here, that this guy should be here, that you haven’t earned this right,’ and then you have somebody else come in and tell you, ‘dude, you are the best fit for this.’ …,” he told “The Dan LeBatard Show” in the interview. “How would it make you feel listening to one or the other, you see what I’m saying?
“And then you hear it, no matter what it is, the good or the bad, you hear it more and more, you start to believe that. I don’t care who you are. You could be the President of the United States, you have a terrible person telling you things that you don’t want to hear or probably shouldn’t be hearing, you’re going to start believing that about yourself. And so that’s what sort of ended up happening. It was, it’s basically been what two years of training that out of not just me, but a couple of guys as well that have been here my rookie year all the way until now.”
During his rookie season in 2020, Tagovailoa was replaced twice in the fourth quarter of games by veteran Ryan Fitzpatrick and then in 2021 he had to endure speculation that the Dolphins were interested in trading for quarterback Deshaun Watson.
The Dolphins fired Flores after the 2021 season, replacing him with McDaniels in 2022.
In his first season under McDaniel, he threw for 3,548 yards and 25 touchdowns despite missing four games because of multiple concussions. Last season, he led the NFL with 4,624 passing yards, threw for a career-best 29 touchdowns and earned his first Pro Bowl selection.