Tua Tagovailoa has played for two different head coaches during his four-year career in the NFL, and if you want to know which one he likes better, well, it’s pretty clear.
Apparently, Tagovailoa hated playing for former Dolphins head coach Brian Flores, who was in Miami for two seasons with Tagovailoa (2020-21). During a recent interview on “The Dan LeBetard show with Stugotz,” Tagovailoa was asked to compare his current head coach, Mike McDaniel, with Flores, and the normally reserved Tagovailoa used that opportunity to go off on his old coach.
“To put it in the simplest terms, if you woke up every morning and I told you that you suck at what you did, that you don’t belong doing what you do, that you shouldn’t be here, that this guy should be here, that you haven’t earned this,” Tagovailoa said, describing Flores’ coaching style. “And then you have somebody else come in and tell you, ‘Dude, you are the best fit for this. You’re accurate. You’re the best whatever, you’re this, you’re that.’ How would it make you feel listening to one or the other?”
Based on Tagovailoa’s answer, McDaniel is an extremely positive coach while Flores went the opposite route to try and motivate his players, which didn’t work so well for him in Miami. Flores, who is now serving as the Vikings’ defensive coordinator, wished Tagovailoa “nothing but the best” when he was asked about his former quarterback’s comments on Tuesday.
“I’ve done a lot of reflecting on the situation and communication,” Flores said about his time with Tagovailoa. “Do I think there’s things that I could do better? For sure, and I’ve grown in that way. … But I would say, over the long haul, I’ve had a lot of great relationships over my 21-year career in the league.”
Tagovailoa had a tumultuous two years with Flores. After being selected with the fifth overall pick, Tagovailoa didn’t start right away. Flores decided to go with Ryan Fitzpatrick to open the 2020 season and that decision kept Tagovailoa on the bench until nearly halfway through the year. Even after getting the starting job, Tagovailoa still had to fight to keep it. Flores benched him twice during the 2020 season in favor of Fitzpatrick.
In 2021, things didn’t get much better with Flores spending most of the offseason trying to replace Tagovailoa with Deshaun Watson, who was on the trade block. Obviously, Tua probably wasn’t thrilled that his coach was constantly trying to replace him.
Flores spent 11 seasons in New England before being hired as the Dolphins head coach in 2019, and it’s pretty obvious he was taking some of his coaching cues out of the Bill Belichick handbook. Belichick was famous for ripping Tom Brady during Patriots’ film sessions, and it seems that Flores clearly took that mindset with him to Miami.
The problem with that is that not everyone responds the same way to that kind of reinforcement. Tagovailoa definitely was not a fan of how Flores treated him.
“You hear it and you hear it — regardless of what is, the good or the bad — and you hear it more and more and you start to actually believe that,” Tagovailoa said. “I don’t care who you are, you could be the president of the United States, you have a terrible person who’s telling you things that you don’t want to hear or probably shouldn’t be hearing, you’re going to start to believe that about yourself. That’s sort of what ended up happening. It’s basically been two years of training that out.”
Flores got fired after the 2021 season and that’s when the Dolphins brought in McDaniel. In two seasons under McDaniel, Tagovailoa has flourished, including last year, when he led the NFL in passing yards with 4,624, which led to his first career Pro Bowl nod.
Tagovailoa has been so good that the Dolphins recently rewarded him with four-year, $212.4 million extension that included $167 million in guarantees. Tagovailoa is now going to be in Miami for the long term, which is something that may not have happened if Flores had never been fired.
