Origin Of Intense AFC Quarterback Criticism Was Fake And Manufactured
Criticism eventually comes to all NFL players at some point. But if you’ve been living under a rock since 2020, then you wouldn’t know that first-round draft pick Tua Tagovailoa has been one of the most criticized quarterbacks in the modern era by fans and media alike. However, it has now been determined that most of the criticism has been unwarranted because the narratives pushing those criticisms were fake.
Tua’s Criticism Was From Fake Narratives
Shockingly, not only were those criticism narratives fake, but it appears that they were intentionally manufactured. The two remaining questions remain from who and why. Certainly, the first criticism was toward any team that drafted a quarterback coming off a dislocated and fractured hip. But that was a legitimate concern, not manufactured or a fake narrative. And it was an understandable concern since nobody has ever recovered from a hip injury to perform at a high level at football again. Fortunately, Tagovailoa was the first quarterback in NFL history to overcome that concern.
Yes, there were early rumors a few years back that some unnamed players were unhappy with Tagovailoa being named the starter over Ryan Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick was a player favorite and Tagovailoa was the new kid in the room. And it was reportedly leaked that some unnamed players leaked critical takes on the young quarterback to local media that eventually snowballed to national media and fans. There was even a rumor that former head coach Brian Flores was unhappy with Tagovailoa being on the team because he wanted to draft Jordan Love instead of Tua.
Whether true or not, internally it appeared that there may have been a disagreement over Tagovailoa’s playing ability with a Miami Dolphins executive and the former head coach. If that rumor was true, then that could have been part of the factors of the former head coach’s untimely firing.
When the critical narratives began to pile up on sports shows and among fans on social media about Tagovailoa it appeared to be one fake narrative after another intentionally manufactured. Miami Dolphins fans were already miffed at Alabama head coach and former Dolphins head coach Nick Saban for abruptly leaving the Dolphins for the college job after saying he wouldn’t. And any player coming out of Saban’s Alabama team may have not set well with some Dolphins fans.
But the major critical takes began when Trent Dilfer said that Tagovailoa threw the football as well as Dan Marino and Aaron Rodgers and threw it better than Rodgers at that stage of his development. This upset a lot of fans and media personalities since Tagovailoa had yet to play a single snap in an NFL game. Rodgers and Marino are both respected players of the game and most Miami faithful considered Marino to be the greatest NFL quarterback of all time.
When a lot of Miami fans heard this, it added criticism fuel to the fire, especially about someone coming out of Nick Saban’s camp. It literally broke off a cult following of fans that set out on a missionary journey to prove to the world how awful Tagovailoa was compared to Dan Marino. These are the fans that no matter how good Tagovailoa was on an NFL football field, or how many categories he led the NFL in passing stats as he did in 2022, they still believe their critical take mission is not over.
Apart from that, even those media personalities that loved Aaron Rodgers and were fans of other NFL teams apart from the Dolphins made it a point to demonstrate how good their favorite quarterback (not just Rodgers or Marino) was over how bad Tagovailoa was despite being false. It was a manufactured narrative of fake takes that were untrue and not accurate.
Media Manipulated Fans
The problem with criticism about Tagovailoa grew its’ first legs and took off when sports media around the country began to broadcast fake information and false narratives about Tagovailoa. And that made it a problem for gullible fans manipulated by the media who didn’t read stats or watch Miami games, but just believed what the media narratives were about the young quarterback. There are fans today who don’t even realize that Tagovailoa led the NFL in multiple categories in 2022 only because they just believed what the naysayers say on the internet, or what the media is broadcasting.
Initially, there were the Colin Cowherds, Stephen A. Smiths, Mike Florios, and the Chris Simms of the world mocking and telling us that Tagovailoa can’t throw the ball past 5 or 10 yards in the air. And the fans without knowledge of Tagovailoa shredding defenses with 50-plus yard passes at Alabama spent most of their energy arguing with Alabama fans that saw it for three seasons. Despite video evidence, they still wanted to believe the media personalities and former head coach Brian Flores telling everyone that Tagovailoa can’t make all the throws presumably because of his own personal vendetta.
We now know that the “Tua can’t throw deep” narrative was a fake and manufactured criticism. Tagovailoa admitted that his coaching staff didn’t have plays drawn for him to throw the ball downfield in a 2022 Muscle and Fitness Magazine interview. When that former coaching staff was fired and a coach was hired to play off Tagovailoa’s strengths, Tua Tagovailoa led the NFL in completed AIR yards per completion (8.8), completed AIR yards per attempt (5.7), and second in intended AIR yards per attempt (9.5). He also led the league in completion percentage of passes over 20 yards.
Even the fans that are ignorant enough to say that Tagovailoa’s success is only because of Jaylen Waddle and Tyreek Hill’s yards after the catch, calling Tua a YAC merchant aren’t knowledgeable enough to know that Tagovailoa was the least YAC-dependent quarterback in the NFL at only 36% of his yards.
As far as batted passes in 2022, Tua led the NFL for the second consecutive season with the least batted passes for quarterbacks that started 12 or more games. He was fourth in the NFL with the highest on-target percentage, was the third least sacked quarterback, and led the NFL in passer rating, touchdown percentage, yards per attempt, and yards per completion.
Even former Tua supporter turned anti-Tua supporter, Shannon Sharpe gave a false narrative of how bad Waddle’s and Tyreek Hill’s yards per reception would be in 2022. He compared it to how good Waddle was at Alabama, intentionally ignoring that Tagovailoa was Waddle’s Alabama quarterback and based it off of Waddle’s low ’21 YPC, ignoring the poor coaching scheme. Destroying that fake critical take was Jaylen Waddle leading the NFL in Yards per reception with 18.1 at the hands of Tua Tagovailoa being his quarterback in 2022.
Now that the cult following of those spending hours with criticism, trying to research how bad Tagovailoa is in categories have failed to find accurate information, they’ve turned their attention to durability. The absurdity of this year’s new critical take on Tua, durability, is that he didn’t even suffer a muscle, ligament, or bone injury at all. And most of the fans are denying the fact that Tua only didn’t play because he was forced not to play because an NFL concussion protocol required progressive steps to take before being allowed to return to an NFL game.
Most of the weak fans today would scream like a child seeing a ladybug for the first time if they ever watched Dolphins fullback Larry Csonka play and how many concussions he sustained. Csonka received multiple concussions in 1968, spending time in the hospital, and yet returned to the game to become a Hall of Famer.
The truth is: most of the criticism people have seen about Tagovailoa for the past three years isn’t real.