Despite police incident, Tua Tagovailoa, Dolphins put focus on nemesis for Thursday night

The days between Miami’s season-opening 20-17 victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday and the Dolphins’ matchup with the Buffalo Bills on Thursday night usually would have been filled with questions about stopping Josh Allen, blocking Von Miller or ending the one-sided nature of the AFC East series.

Instead, the Dolphins players and coaches have been quizzed about a traffic stop involving Miami All-Pro wide receiver Tyreek Hill on his way to Hard Rock Stadium for Sunday’s game. What started as a speeding stop escalated into Hill being dragged from his car, handcuffed facedown on the pavement and forcibly made to sit on the sidewalk. Teammate Calais Campbell also was briefly handcuffed.

The release of the police body-camera video of the incident has sparked national debate on who was in the right and wrong. And while Hill said on Wednesday he wished he “could go back and do things a bit differently” and didn’t “think that we should use this as a moment to separate people or divide people or make it a battle or anything like that, because I still love cops,” the former West Alabama standout also said one of the policemen involved should be fired.

“Gone, gone, gone, gone,” Hill said. “He got to go, man, because in that instance right there, not only did he treat me bad, he also treated my teammates with disrespect. He had some crazy words toward them, and they ain’t even do nothing.”

So how do the Dolphins keep the escalating attention from overwhelming their preparation?

“Well, I think the thing is we don’t avoid the obvious,” Miami quarterback Tua Tagovailoa said. “It’s a thing, yeah. Let it be what it is. Let it take its course. I think when we start to brush that away and think that this football thing is the most important thing to us when this isn’t just something that Tyreek had gone through. This is something that people in general go through.

“That’s a life thing. Football, we’re blessed to do this. We’re blessed to be able to play this sport. We’re blessed to make all this money to do what we love, and it’s for fun, but that’s real life. No games in that, brother.”

But that doesn’t mean the situation has taken priority over the Bills.

“I know Tyreek has gathered a group of us together to do something, to help change some things,” Tagovailoa said. “He’s come up with a couple ideas, and we’ve gathered to talk about what we wanted to do. Obviously, we’re going to worry about this week. But next week, we’ll get back together and we’ll talk about how we can do something to change what is going on.”

Normally the storyline for Miami this week would be the Dolphins’ struggles against Buffalo. Miami has won one of its past 12 meetings with the Bills. Since the Dolphins’ 21-19 victory on Sept. 25, 2022, Buffalo has won four in a row against Miami.

“That’s going to be what’s written out there until we do something about that,” Tagovailoa said. “That’s going to be the narrative: That we can’t beat the Bills. And until we do beat them, and we beat them consistently, none of that’s going to change.

“And we have an opportunity to do that this year. We have an opportunity to do that this Thursday.”

The teams’ most recent meeting was particularly damaging for the Dolphins. By winning 21-14 on Miami’s home field in the 2023 regular-season finale, Buffalo got to start the postseason at home against the Pittsburgh Steelers while the Dolphins fell into a wild-card slot and had to play a frigid road game against the Kansas City Chiefs, the defending NFL champions.

Tagovailoa threw an interception with Miami at the Buffalo 40-yard line with 1:13 to play in the regular-season finale.

“Last year is last year, brother,” Tagovailoa said on Tuesday. “What a political answer.Oh my gosh.

“Last year is last year, brother. Worry about this year, so we’ll see what we got today, and we’ll work its way down to Thursday and see what we can do Thursday.”