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Ben Maller's take on Tua (verrry long post)

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Ben Maller on Fox Sports Radio works in the late night and early morning hours with the motto that the best story is often in the losing locker room. In a rare moment of positivity, he had some good things to say about the Dolphins on draft night. I really liked when he said how things worked out despite the Fins winning a few games.

In this long post I’ve made a rough transcription of his comments on Tua, or you can listen to the podcast at iHeartRADIO. Look for the Ben Maller Show, episode title “Virtual Draft Day” dated April 24, 2020. Commentary starting at the 44-minute mark and runs about 12 minutes.

A Tua for Your Thoughts

What about Tua? It’s time for the Tua hour. The Dolphins, who haven’t had a quarterback since Dan Marino, selecting Alabama QB Tua Tagovailoa with the number 5 overall pick. They didn’t have to trade up, they didn’t make the big bold move. The highlight was Roger Goodell--he had some issues pronouncing Tua Tagovailoa’s name, and I feel his pain because I had the same thing the night he came in for Jalen Hurts in that championship game for Alabama. I was like oh man how do you say this guy’s name?

Are the Dolphins and Tua Tagovailoa a match made in heaven? The answer is yes. This is a perfect situation for Tua.

Number 1: All things considered Tua Tagovailoa is set up with everything he could have hoped for. The Dolphins are a bad football team and are not suddenly going to become a good football team but in his situation where you look at his resume in Alabama and it’s really good on this side and not so good on the other.

Tua was like a crash test dummy in college he got tossed around like a tin can in a hurricane and he leaves Tuscaloosa with not one but two ankle surgeries and that famous dislocated hip. They said in the lead up here we’ve read all the draft reviews and they said one similar thing: this is the riskiest pick in the draft but I would say it’s the most rewarding pick in the draft.

In gambling parlance--life is a gamble--it is akin to betting on green in the game of roulette. Post-combine medical reports have been positive. What does that mean? Does that mean that the doctors are in cahoots with Tua? All these players picked…they all have different degrees of risk. We always talk about the crapshoot, which it really is…your foundation ultimately is the talent. And Tua, he’s got a lot of that talent in the repository.

Is he going to be a 20-year quarterback like Tom Brady? NO, I’d be shocked if he had a career like that. But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have a run like the late Steve McNair who had 10-13 years in the NFL and had success, at times a great player.

From the sound of things the Dolphins seem like they’re going to be slow-walking Tua, we’ll see if they do that.

The risk/reward thing. I’ve always been play the guy, you don’t learn from watching, you learn from doing, that’s always been my position on this. I feel like this is the exception to the rule though. They’ve got wiggle room. The dreaded redshirt rookie season would make a lot of sense here. When you have the Amish rifle you don’t have to hurry up and play Tua Tagovailoa.

Once Tua is ready to play, Ryan Fitzpatrick can then slide into Foxboro and that would complete the entire AFC east tour. That would be the last team in the AFC east he needs to play for.

Second thing the Dolphin fan. This a good situation for the team, for Tua all the way around. The NFL draft has been about peddling cheap low grade optimism. Your team blows, but the future is bright. Often that is false hope. But in this case I think there’s legitimately something here, some meat on the bone. And this is placed in reality.

Tua Tagovailoa is a suspect, because you’re a suspect (not a prospect) until otherwise proven. However this guy’s an elite suspect and before the 2020 season what was the talk on dumb shows like this: Tank for Tua! We want Tua. The crowd goes wild.

And the Dolphins, the stumblebums in Miami, overachieved in the field. They still were a bad team but they were still much better than the anticipation. The Dolphins were supposed to be a historically bad team. There was chatter that they were not going to win a game, they were going to be the new Browns or Lions and go 0-16, and that quickly went out the window because they actually competed, they tried to win, so they didn’t suck enough to get the number one pick like Cincinnati and get Joe Burrow and it seemed like Brian Flores had screwed the franchise. It turns out, the planets lined up, and by trying to win, which you should do, we all agree on that, and they did, they didn’t fall for the low-hanging fruit of trust the process and it worked out.

And the other thing about Tua, the people that are taking potshots at Tua Tagovailoa must be suffering from amnesia in terms of how good he was in college. Joe Burrow was wonderful but you don’t know yet whether he’s a one-hit wonder. Tua was not a one-hit wonder at Alabama, he backed it up. And that the stat, I don’t know if you saw it or not but man was it impressive. Tua had more games with Nick Saban where he had four or more touchdowns (he had 12 of those games) than he had games where he had even a single interception (11 games). That’s insane, that’s video-game cheat code territory.

Final point: in addition to health, you can’t overlook that but all these guys are a risk, they’ve been injured in one way or another obviously Tua’s injuries are more well know, they’re more serious but the criticism also for Tua has been his petite build. And you can’t fight it, the fact is that he, you watch him play he does have that fragile vibe to him but people said the same thing about Drew Brees. He’s 6 foot, he’s listed at 217 pounds, and another thing is he throws left-handed.

And when you combine 6-feet tall, around 215 pounds, and you’re left handed, you have become, for the scouting world of football, you are the ugly red-headed stepchild. Right? They want right-handed quarterbacks, there is a stigma against the left-handed quarterbacks THERE’S NEVER BEEN A GOOD ONE SINCE STEVE YOUNG, TEBOW WAS LEFT-HANDED, HE WASN’T THAT GOOD! And I won’t go through the whole list. And so I’ve always said if you’re good enough it doesn’t matter if you throw right or left-handed it’s kind of obvious right? The talent will ultimately win out.

And Brian Flores, the Dolphins, have kind of an advantage when they finally play Tua. He learned from Belichick and you’ve got to know your onions. And you have to also be imaginative. And look at the positive here, teams are not used to going against left-handed quarterbacks. It’s unorthodox….keeping opposing defenses off guard.

The Aloha swagger. If you saw the draft you know what I’m talking about. Tua and his family sitting in Alabama were decked out like they were ready to attend a traditional Hawaiian Luau. They had the outfits and they were going for it. You could have ended up in Cincinnati, you could have ended up in Detroit, you could have ended up in a lot of different places and instead you’re going to be sitting in Miami where it’s 85 degrees pretty much every day of the year.
 
...hard to write so MUCH and basically say nothing new...

totally corporate crap IMO.

But of course.

In my opinion.


Hard to say anything new about Tua ... he has had his own thread for months lol ...

It must be tough to come up with anything these days with everyone locked down ....

If they keep this up the fans will have been introduced to most family members of top draft picks along with riveting interviews filled with fluff questions that nobody really cares about lol
 
Say what you want about Tua but one thing is for dame sure... he certainly tags those violas.
 
I hate when people try to say how long a kids career will be..

Nobody knows how anyone is going to play, Rodgers has 12 years playing, 15 in the league and he's falling off quick. Brady is a unicorn and it'll be years before another dominant 40 year old qb plays.
 
Hard to say anything new about Tua ... he has had his own thread for months lol ...

It must be tough to come up with anything these days with everyone locked down ....

If they keep this up the fans will have been introduced to most family members of top draft picks along with riveting interviews filled with fluff questions that nobody really cares about lol
Yeah. At this point you got the hot babe to take the alter now you need her to stay hot and fun...
 
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