Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa won’t miss Sunday’s game against the Seattle Seahawks after all. That’s not to say the former Alabama All-American will play — he can’t — but he will be there.
After being placed on injured reserve on Tuesday, the quarterback is ineligible to play. But Miami coach Mike McDaniel said on Friday that Tagovailoa would accompany the team to Seattle for the game.
Tagovailoa sustained a concussion in a 31-10 loss to the Buffalo Bills on Sept. 12. The Dolphins decided injured reserve would be the best course for Tagovailoa, who missed five games in the 2022 season because of two concussions.
“Tua is doing great,” Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill said. “I’m sure y’all done asked everybody in the locker room that, but he’s doing amazing. How the locker room is going — the biggest thing that we want is to make sure that Tua is all right. Once I called him the day after or whatever, I heard his voice, heard that he was in good spirits, I was cool, man, because to me this (expletive) is bigger than football. Our life is bigger than football. We’re also individuals with families, we’ve got stuff going on. Once I heard that, it was cool.”
The injured-reserve designation will keep Tagovailoa sidelined for four games, and Miami has plugged backup Skylar Thompson into the lineup. The Dolphins signed quarterback Snoop Huntley from the Baltimore Ravens’ practice squad on Monday, and QB Tim Boyle is on Miami’s practice squad.
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“He’s given me some really great advice and has been a great sounding board for me,” Thompson said of Tagovailoa. “And if I have questions or something pops up that, ‘Hey, like Tua, how’d you handle this or how’d you do this?’ He’s so quick to give me answers and to do anything to help me, and I’m very, very thankful for Tua because, obviously, with the situation, I think it just speaks volumes about the person that we already know who he is. But it’s special, and I’m thankful to have him around with me because it gives me confidence to have him around.”
Huntley said Tagovailoa had helped him, too.
“I’ve been here 24 hours,” Huntley said on Thursday. “I probably spent about a good little hour or two with Tua on the field and in the meeting rooms. And then in walkthroughs, I just been talking to him and trying to get his grasp of the offense. He’s great.”
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The Dolphins and Seahawks square off at 3:05 p.m. CDT Sunday at Lumen Field in Seattle. Miami has a 1-1 record, and the Seahawks own a 2-0 mark.
“I think this team in particular really follows through with the hope you have as a coach where any time anyone goes down, especially a gigantic contributor and/or the starting quarterback, the mindset is not to do anything but uplift the team by doing whatever has to be done and doing that collectively,” McDaniel said. “So I think I would be disappointed if I was on a team that wasn’t like that. Since I’ve been here, all of our teams have really taken it as a rallying cry for the whole team to come together and understand that it’s strength in numbers, that it’s no one person on this team that has to do everything. …
“We want to win a game, and that challenge and what it takes as a team to go ahead every week and next man up, whatever position, that’s something that, on the heels of having a tremendous disappointment in a divisional game, we have all the incentive we need and then some to go and have a team win.”
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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.
