Ryan Fitzpatrick is part of Amazon’s Thursday Night Football studio crew this NFL season, but it wasn’t long ago that he played an NFL football player with the Miami Dolphins. In the time that he played for the franchise and the current quarterback Tua Tagovailoa was also there.
Even though Tagovailoa can be enjoying many successes at the moment in the current 3-0 Dolphins but he also gained the reputation of being unable in keeping up NFL game during his beginning days. Fitzpatrick posted an incident on Thursday that matched that image.
When Tua was the quarterback in the starting lineup throughout the entire 2020 season, the former director of football Brian Flores would occasionally sub him out to Fitzpatrick in the four-quarter time period in particular when the game was tied. In the present, Fitzpatrick believes it is his opinion that Flores could have let his new QB get experience rather than bringing him back with a game in the balance.
“There was the Denver game that I came in in the fourth quarter, and there was the Las Vegas game and I came in the fourth quarter,” Fitzpatrick said to Joe Schad of the Palm Beach Post. “I believe that it was an acknowledgement by our coach that there were some aspects that were part of (Tua’s) game that were not yet ready due to his age with regard to the two minute drill and the ability to execute some of the tasks effectively.
“But he’s so talented that it was about time to take him to the field and teach him to understand. So, I believed that (Tua) had done a fantastic job that year and that was a challenge. being able to show up at work every day with an ebullient smile. After the day I went home, there were certain things that became more rocky with this relationship.”
In the past, Flores told reporters that he had no intention of removing Tagovailoa from the game at crucial moments was not a sign in his lack confidence in the quarterback’s young age, however, it’s difficult to believe. It appears that the struggles Tua has been forced to go through have paid dividends for him and the Dolphins currently.