The Weight Of Tua’s Expectations
Consider this a companion piece, a double feature, to the previous comic. I was trying to find a way to combine both QBs issues into one joke but wasn’t able too, probably because they are just different enough. But they both more or less start from the same point: unrealistic expectations.
Lamar has a lot of people who look at his shortcomings as a passer and focus on that, ignoring how much he actually has accomplished and that player development is a thing that usually takes time. Tua has a lot of people who got hype poisoning and have already deemed him a bust without giving the poor guy any time to prove himself. It’s not all the Dolphins fanbase, it’s not even most, it is just a subset of people with wacked out expectations who are impatient and stupid.
When Tua got drafted I think Dolphins fans were more hyped than any other fanbase. The franchise openly tanked, and Tua hype was on the menu from week 2 on. Despite winning enough games to end up at pick #5, Cincy took Joe Burrow and teams 2-4 all had what they thought was their QB of the future (those teams were Washington, NYG, and Detroit, so lol in retrospect). The Dolphins got the guy they wanted for years. The hype was on.
Tua did not live up to the hype. He was average at best, didn’t do anything of note, and was replaced by Fitzmagic near the end when Miami decided to try for the playoff push. What some people seem to fail to realize is that…uh…there’s no reason to worry? Not yet? For fucks sake, I know NFL fans have lost their sense of patience as QBs have entered the league more NFL ready then they used to but come on.
First up, the obvious: Tua was recovering from an absolutely devastating hip injury that many people feared would actually straight up end his football career. Yes, he was cleared to play, but there is a difference between cleared to play and fully recovered. It was his first time on a football field in a long time. He surely had some issues finding his sea legs. Not everyone is Adrian Peterson after an ACL tear, and Tua’s injury was really bad. I’d be willing to cut anyone slack after what happened with him.
Then, piled on top of that, you have Covid during your rookie year. Last year was not normal for anyone. Training camps and workouts got slashed or removed altogether. The normal bonding and practice that normally occurs just…didn’t exist. Tua didn’t get preseason games to re-find his sea legs. He didn’t get long camps to work out with his new teammates. He was stuck in a bizzaro limbo like most of us. I didn’t read up much on scouting reports but from what I recall a lot of Tua’s game at Bama was precision and timing. He wasn’t a big improvisor like Burrow nor a big athlete. He was smart and precise. When you game demands something like that, practice is absolutely vital. He never got a chance to spend hours finding his rhythms with his teammates. I think improvisors have an edge in early NFL careers because they can get themselves out of a jam on a bad team with ease. You can train an improvisor to eventually settle in and play pocket ball when needed, but the other way around doesn’t really work.
What else? Well, how about his college success poisoning people? Tua was incredible at Bama, but Bama was just an extremely well constructed team to begin with. He probably got too much credit for the juggernaut.
The other thing that really jumps out to me is Fitzmagic and the playoff push on a franchise not ready for it. In my humble opinion, the Dolphins made a mistake late in the year by trying to go for the playoffs instead of focusing on developing the team. The Phish were playing with house money. Nobody expected much out of them. Their roster was gutted and full of inexperienced youth. They overplayed compared to expectation against mediocre to bad teams (The Rams were arguably the only “good” team they beat) and when the season was winding down, they had a chance. Tua got a minor injury, Fitz came back in, and Fitz went for it in typical Fitz fashion and the Dolphins rallied behind him. They missed the playoffs because Fitz is cursed but really, was this squad going to beat the Bills, Chiefs, Titans, Ravens, Browns, Colts, or Steelers? Maybe the Steelers/Colts. The divisional round was probably their absolute ceiling.
A lot of the Tua doubters point to Fitz playing better than Tua in the later season as part of the reason the team should move on from Tua or at least consider trading him. But like, of course he did? Fitz has been in the league since 1943 or something and has been taking over the starting job and playing gonzo football for his entire career. That’s his jam. Fitz just fucking goes as hard as possible. He chucks it deep and gives no fucks. He was once again in a position to give no fucks and go hog wild. Of course the guy with tons of experience in this exact scenario played better than the rookie, recovering from a hip injury, on a rebuilding team, in a year with no training camp. I would have been shocked if Fitz didn’t outplay Tua last season. Unfortunately in the long run I wonder if the benching and subsequent dismissal from the fanbase around it is going to hurt Tua. You’d hope not, but nobody likes working in a place that you don’t feel fully supports you.
Lastly, Justin Herbert kinda did that thing where a guy everyone labels as a huge bust before he even plays went out and lit up the league, which just made poor Tua look worse in comparison.
Tua had a huge amount of expectations on his back and it shouldn’t be a mark against him that he didn’t meet them. Considering everything, I think he was acceptable. He was likely always going to need development time because, you know, most players do, and this next season should be a far more reasonable portrait of his abilities. He’s presumably the guy now with Fitz gone, he’s got a big shiny new weapon, a year of experience in the system, an extra year of recovery from the hip injury and most importantly, a chance to practice with his boys. I’m excited to see what he can do.
EDIT: Apparently Tua is left handed and I somehow never noticed that
Miami should have gotten Tua Sewell instead of Mike Wallace 4.0. Dude’s gonna be on his ass all year long.
Relax, we got the lineman in the second. Also Waddle is nothing like Wallace personality-wise. That a-hole refused to practise and gave zero effort. He tricked everyone for years into thinking Tannehill had no deep ball. Waddle is a high-effort guy who already has chemistry with Tua. It will be fine
Waddle was also a total reach. He wasn’t even the best receiver on his own team!
lmao watch the opposing defences when Waddle was on. Nobody cared about stopping Devonta Smith when Waddle was playing
I remember when Kolton Miller was considered a bust, after his first season with the Raiders. Last season, he was one of the top 10 tackles in the league. People shouldn’t be so quick to label players as busts after only one or two seasons.
Thanks to passing friendly era due to rule changes, QBs are expected to become instant hits or busts which really tells you something. Imagine how these people would react if they had seen some early seasons of QBs like Elway, Aikman, Bradshaw among others and those are the HOFers.
You how how it is with ridiculous expectations, I mean there are still some brain dead mongoloids who thinks Peyton Manning’s rookie season was one of the all time worse when many QBs in that era would have killed to have that as their rookie season. Also wonder how Strahan would have been viewed in his first four years had the guy been drafted a round earlier.
Buff Dolphins Guy’s let himself go…
you got there first. i been condition to expect beefcake with my tuna…
wait…
There’s a Ron White routine in that somewhere.
It’s even funnier because from what I understand, the dolphins were expected to be terrible last year after trading away so many good players. They were ahead of schedule and playing with house money the whole year, but as soon as they realized “hey we might be good” suddenly the focus shifted from developing all your young guys to WHY AREN’T WE WINNING MORE, WE’RE GOOD. I mean heck, considering that josh allen exists and was complete butt for his first couple of years and is now considered one of the top QBs in the league should be lesson enough to not give up on guys after friggin year 1.
yeah, i dunno, going for it makes sense to me. supposedly “act like you’ve been there” and all that. maybe giving experience with a balls-out playoff push is valuable in itself, nevermind maybe playing (and coping with losing) a playoff game. flores is a good coach, and openly tanking in the NFL is only for teams just starting a rebuild, not ones with the main pieces in place already. bit of a ramble there, but i hope you grok…
y’know, really pathetic ones, like the jets
I think some of the reaction to Tua’s rookie year is confirmation bias as well. There were quite a few people that were skeptical of the guy coming out of college and fully prepared to label him a bust as soon as he fell short of expectations for the simple reason that he was an Alabama QB and, at least before Tua became the starter, Bama QBs had a reputation of not being particularly good once they left the college Death Star. Of course, that ignored the fact that Tua was a much more prolific passer than anyone who came before him and that Bama relied heavily on his arm to win games instead of leaning on the rushing attack like in years past, but oh well.
If Josh Allen, another AFC East QB that had a mediocre at best rookie year, is anything to go by, Tua should be alright once he gets adjusted to the NFL. It’s stupid to write a guy off after year one.
This is also a really good point I hadn’t considered, there are absolutely some who wanted him to bust or expected him to and jumped on the bandwagon
I think the counter to your idea that they passed more than ran has to do with the receiving corps then just him. His last year at Bama, he was throwing to 4 1st round picks, was protected by a line with 2 1st round picks and a 2nd round pick. I’m not saying that the 2019 Alabama team could have beaten an NFL team, but I do think they would have made a game against a team like the Jets or the Jaguars.
All of that, plus the fact that SEC QBs as a whole (not just Bama) tend to underperform in the NFL (there are only 3 established SEC QBs in the league currently: Stafford, Newton and Prescott), only adds to the idea that he was propped up by his supporting cast.
It’s probably not fair to call him a bust or compare him to someone like Herbert, but he does need to show improvement this year otherwise he’ll start earning that label.
I get that argument, but I’d also counter that Tua elevated those guys unlike Bama QBs of the past. Jalen Hurts was throwing to similarly talented targets and he looked mediocre at best before heading off to Oklahoma to play ball. Guys like Jake Coker and Blake Sims similarly didn’t do much to elevate the WR corps despite having talents like Amari Cooper, Calvin Ridley, and OJ Howard among others. Bama’s always had that level of talent on the outside, but Tua was the first to actually do anything with it because he was more than a game manager/athlete. He had legit arm talent that the other guys before him didn’t possess.
In general, the talent argument is a tricky one in college. You’re either a product of the teams’ talent/system because you play at a large school or you haven’t faced any legit competition because you played at a small school. Both are fair arguments, but it makes it hard to truly evaluate who’s actually good and who’s not ready. Counting the number of QBs from each conference isn’t always the best indicator either, since there’s a pretty even distribution of QBs from all conferences, not just Power 5. No conference has more than 5 truly established starters in the league, and you could argue that the SEC could have at least 4 if you include Joe Burrow before his knee exploded.
That being said, I agree that Tua does need to at least show some improvement next year to avoid the bust label entirely. I don’t think it’s fair to stick him with it so soon, given that he was playing in a very limited offense and didn’t get the normal preparation that most rookies benefit from, but the only way to stop the talking heads is to perform.
Did he raise guys like Ruggs and Jeudy Perhaps, you could use their performance without him to make that argument (though Jeudy did decent considering the QB room in Denver last season), but Devonta Smith won the Heisman with Mac Jones throwing to him. While other Alabama QBs had good weapons (like Cooper, Ridley, etc), I can’t think of a time when they were so stacked at the WR position.
While I agree that counting QBs from each conference isn’t the best, the SEC still routinely sends out mediocre offerings with the occasional elite qb. Who is the best SEC QB drafted in the past 20 years? Newton? Stafford? Eli? After those 3 it’s a steep drop off or you’re dealing with relatively unproven commodities. Personally, I would say in order to be established as a starting QB you need to maintain your play over a couple seasons at least in order to weed out 1 season wonders (Hello Derick Anderson!) Burrow could join that list next season fair. Meanwhile, several of the best QBs come from either the Big 12, Big 10 or ACC: Mahomes, Brady, Murray, Wilson, Jackson, Watson, Brees (pre-retirement obviously). What current former SEC QB would you take over any of them? It’s been that way for a while. You have to go back to Cam’s MVP season for an SEC QB to be an All Pro. It’s been him and Peyton since the year 2000.
I would say that every conference trots out mediocre QBs for the most part. There are stretches where a conference or two will produce a number of quality starters, but it rarely lasts. The Big 10 sent out Tom Brady and Drew Brees then failed to produce another high-end starter until Russell Wilson in 2012. Meanwhile, Philip Rivers and Matt Ryan were the only ACC QBs that had done anything of note until Deshaun Watson and Lamar Jackson came along in 2017 and 2018. The Big 12 was in a similar spot as the ACC, except that you could argue that they did not produce anyone of note until very recently with Mahomes, Mayfield and Murray all exploding onto the scene (RG3 might be a good example since he was pretty good before injuries ruined him). Hell, the Pac-12 can say that they sent up Aaron Rodgers and Andrew Luck as well.
The SEC has a pretty similar hit-rate over the last 20 years. Eli Manning, Matthew Stafford, Cam Newton and Dak Prescott as you mentioned. Joe Burrow could end up in that group as well but I agree that it’s too early to make that call. I’d have to look back at the All-Pros since 2001, but I’m guessing that no conference has more than 3 individual guys that have earned an All-Pro since then. Feel free to correct me on this though.
Your comment Mac Jones raises an interesting, but kind of unrelated point. Mac Jones is a more interesting prospect than Tua in my opinion. He has all of the traits of the standard, mediocre Bama QBs of the past, but he put up better numbers than Tua did with arguably worse talent (Jaylen Waddle missed most of the season and I don’t know if John Metchie can be classed as a first round talent yet). I’m interested to see how he does working under the Hoodie.
The 24 hours news cycle followed by Twitter have really killed peoples ability to wait on a player. Now that you’re hearing about big players constantly people make decisions so much faster. 30 years ago when a team outside your division drafted a big prospect you’d see an article or two in the paper about them then nothing until you saw them on TV 5 months later. It might be October by the time you’ve heard their name 10 times and gotten a few people opinion for this QB from another division. Now you’ve heard about them on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, or ESPN 100 times by the end of the draft weekend.
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I had no idea he had a bad hip injury! Really explains how he was playing (especially since in college he was played over Hurts, who was no where near as had as Tua this year). Knowing that, I understand why Miami is giving him a chance, and I think he deserves it too.
now he’s trying to play over hurts…
> their QB of the future (…Detroit, so lol in retrospect)
Aww, I like Stafford. I’d still give him up for a 1st+, but he wasn’t the problem in detroit.
Right handed Tua? Now all of your points are invalid, nice try
Tua is right handed, his dad is a control freak and is left handed so he wanted his kid to throw like him and made him learn how to play lefty. He would also beat Tua for throwing interceptions.
I hope Tua does better this year. Just not better than us…