'Somebody’s hit you in the mouth:' HOF'er Kurt Warner dissects Tua's counterpunch
Tua Tagovailoa was enjoying an MVP-caliber season. What happened the last two weeks? How can he get his mojo back? One of the position's greatest ever — one with the same "superpower" — has thoughts.
The term is warped beyond repair. We hear “system quarterback” and we inevitably picture portraits of mediocrity, when it’s lazy. It’s wrong. It’s unequivocally true that all Hall of Famers shined in a “system.”
Find the right system and anything’s possible.
Find the right system and maybe you’ll go from stocking shelves at a Hy-Vee in Cedar Rapids, Iowa for $5.50 an hour to setting the sport on fire. To this day, the rise of Kurt Warner is unlike any we’ve seen in the NFL. Everyone knows the legendary tale by now. Straight out of the Arena League, off the bench, from the depths of obscurity, Warner piloted “The Greatest Show on Turf.” He won league MVP and the Super Bowl in ‘99 with the St. Louis Rams. He won another MVP and reached another Super Bowl in ’01. And then, in ‘08, he took the Arizona Cardinals to a Super Bowl.
That’s not where this conversation begins, though. Go Long chatted with Warner this week to see what’s up with Tua Tagovailoa considering Warner represents the ceiling, the extreme version of everything the Miami Dolphins quarterback could become one day. His anticipation. His quick trigger. His accuracy. When Warner was on, perhaps no passer was better this century.
This day, Warner’s mind first traces back to what happened in-between those dominant stretches.
To life in the wrong “system.”
With the New York Giants, in 2004, Warner experienced a system that buried his gifts. This offense wasn’t timing-based, instead giving all freedom to the receivers. Giants receivers weren’t cutting out of a break exactly where Warner expected them to be, like Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt and Az-Zair Hakim, no, they had the option to cut left or right.
“And I was a guy who liked to see it, anticipate, trust my eyes, get the ball out quick,” Warner says. “That was my superpower. So I get into a system that does exactly the opposite. It looked like it. We weren’t much of a passing team anyways. We weren’t built that way. A lot of people saw me with the Greatest Show on Turf and then saw me in New York and they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh. He’s done. He can’t play anymore.’ Because the system just didn’t fit me. It wasn’t how I played the game. So, I had to hold the ball longer than I wanted to and all those things that play into it. And then I get to Arizona and we start doing what I do again — and it’s ‘Oh my gosh, he’s playing at an MVP level.’ We go to a Super Bowl.
“The bottom line is if any guy wants to reach his potential, he’s going to have to find a system that plays to what those strengths are and how he sees the game. This system really seems to do that with Tua. His superpower is his ability to get it out and be accurate with the football. The speed guys on the outside have scared defenses. So, it allows that free release and for guys to be where they want to be.
“I can liken it a little bit to the Greatest Show on Turf. We were very timing-oriented.”
Music to the ears of Dolphins fans.
They’d gladly take an offense that scored 526 points and went 16-3 that inaugural season. Tua, Tyreek ‘n co. were well on their way. They, too, looked borderline unstoppable… up to these last two weeks. The San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Chargers essentially threw the red-hot quarterback into a time machine. Before 2022, Tagovailoa did not play in a system that maximized his superpower. We covered all things “Tua Time” with an extended two-part series. But a pair of losses since then have skeptics justifiably wondering if the fast start was the norm or a mirage. Who’s the real Tua? What’s the real Miami offense? We’re going to get answers. And fast. This Saturday night is the Dolphins’ game of the year. They’re heading to Orchard Park, NY to face the 10-3 Buffalo Bills and momentum is not on Miami’s side.
The Dolphins’ offense is stuck in neutral.
This Bills defense just treated Mike White like a dozen wings at Nine-Eleven Tavern.
There could be a foot of snow.
To figure out how Tagovailoa snaps out of this funk, the best place to turn is Warner. He didn’t rely on a rocket-fueled arm or athleticism or magical improvisation. At his best, Warner was a quarterback who decimated defenses from the pocket. If Tagovailoa is going to bust through this rough patch, he’ll need to do the same. Warner isn’t sure where Tagovailoa’s career will go from here — he is “legitimately concerned.” But Warner, who also studies the position as much as any analyst today, does know precisely where Tagovailoa must improve if his career will ascend.
He has answers.
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He uses his own ups and downs as a guide.
The reason he lost that second Super Bowl? Bill Belichick. The New England Patriots head coach knew his defensive backs needed to grab and hold and mug the Rams’ weapons off the line of scrimmage. St. Louis’ offense was based on timing, so they sought to completely rattle that timing. Warner threw a pick-six, St. Louis didn’t score a touchdown until the fourth quarter and the 20-17 Patriots win launched one of the sport’s greatest dynasties.
The Patriots knew their only chance at winning was to throw the Rams completely off-rhythm. Sure, the Rams finished with a bunch of yards but nothing felt fluid. Nothing felt crisp.
The entire game, Warner recalls, was a “struggle.”
“That’s what you’re starting to see teams do to the Dolphins,” he adds. “Even though they have speed guys who can scare you with the big plays down the field, ‘Well, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to knock those guys off and mess up Tua’s timing and we’re going to see if a.) he can make the tight throws; or b.) can he progress on from his original throw and work through his progressions to get to the next guy and the right guy.’ And he hasn’t been able to do that very well. He has struggled with that progression part of it. You give him what he wants and he’s going to be fine. If you don’t give him what he wants and now he’s struggling to work through things and stay patient in the pocket and have those same traits — the accuracy, the decision-making — to be as good as they are when he’s throwing to their No. 1 guy, it’s not an easy thing.”
Tua taking the snap, locating that first target and delivering the ball with decisiveness has mostly been a thing of beauty in Miami.
Tyreek Hill has 100 catches for 1,460 yards with six touchdowns. Jaylen Waddle has 59 grabs for 1,003 yards and six scores. Tagovailoa has been able to hit these two speed demons in stride — like that 4x100 sprinter handing off a baton — to create chunk plays in the passing game.
As noted by private trainer, Nick Hicks, this QB has also been in six different offenses. That’s been a benefit. There’s a wealth of football knowledge packed in Tagovailoa’s brain. Now that teams are having success nudging Miami off-kilter, it’s on McDaniel to somehow design plays that don’t allow DB’s to derail these two receivers and Tagovailoa to progress one… to two… to three at a rapid rate. Getting to three was the challenge against the Chargers and Warner is positive all future defenses will be using that film as a blueprint. Tagovailoa completed only 10 of 28 passes for 145 yards.
Everyone who declared him a bust long ago re-emerged from the forest.
He'll need to either thread the needle on tighter throws to Hill, to Waddle or cycle through his progressions more quickly.
“It’s one thing to throw to a guy when he’s wide open so he can adjust to a football,” Warner says. “It’s another thing when he’s in tight coverage and you have to put the ball right where he needs to be or it’s an incompletion. That’s what we’ve seen the last couple weeks. So I think we’re really going to get a tell on who Tua is and how good he can be in this league. We know what he can be when things are good and the first guy’s there and the system’s playing to his strengths. When teams start taking it away, what are you? That’s the telltale sign for all quarterbacks. You can come in and be successful early when people are trying to learn what you’re going to do and what you’re good at. And then eventually they say, ‘OK, we’re going to take that away. Now show me if you’re good enough when we take away what you want to do.’ That’s what the great ones can do.”
A quarterback, a head coach, a team that’s been gushing with swagger isn’t about to turtle into the fetal postion. Nor should they. Tagovailoa never shied from the Super Bowl talk. Snow? Bring it on. “It snows in Alabama,” he said this week. McDaniel was spotted at practice strutting to YG’s “Who Do You Love?” in rolled up sweatpants and a “I wish it were colder” shirt. They’re carrying themselves like a group that knows damn well everyone expects them to shrivel up and die Saturday night… when they harbor zero plans to do so, when they’re fully prepared to get their season back on track.
Still, inclement weather is an entirely new variable that’ll force Tagovailoa to adjust.
Time to panic? Eh, no. I don’t think so. Tagovailoa has taken very real, very spectacular strides in 2022. Above all, as we covered, he needed to get his confidence back. Brian Flores was a disease. The offense was a mess. The quarterback’s confidence was shot. And in swooped McDaniel showing Tua 700 positive plays. His mind’s in a phenomenal place — beyond X’s and O’s. That matters. Another Hall of Famer, Warren Moon, can tell this is a new Tua Tagovailoa simply by his demeanor.
Warner does see these strides.
Far too often, he says, quarterbacks are discarded. They’re deemed failures when the true failure is the scheme. From Warner’s vantage point, that’s where Tua was in Year 1 and Year 2. When the quarterback was shredding SEC defenses back at Alabama, his greatest strength was getting the ball out. And that’s what frustrated Warner early on those first two seasons. He caught himself yelling, “Throw it! Get the ball out of your hands! What are you waiting on?” Warner wondered if the speed of the NFL was overwhelming.
“And then you see him get into a system like they’re in this year,” Warner says, “and he’s back to doing what he did in college. Hitting that back foot. Knowing where he wants to go with the football. Getting the ball out of his hands quick. I’m sure it’s the players around him and I’m sure it’s Mike McDaniel doing some great things to create some easy opportunities and those quick throws. He’s back to doing what made him Tua.”
Now it’s Round 8 and the opponent in this ring has Tagovailoa wobbling. He needs a counterpunch.
Somehow, he needs to see the game like the former Ram/Cardinal great.
Warner knows his own No. 1 asset was processing information. He could see the “big picture” of a play and function “beyond my first receiver.” If he needed to hang in the pocket an extra second to do so — and absorb a crushing hit from a blitzing linebacker — he could. Warner countered with his mind, not his legs.
“You’re going to do this? OK. We’re going to do that. My counter was the ability to think and adjust things. OK, you’re going to jam my receivers. Here’s what we’re still going to do to you. We’re going to have some counter plays that attack you attacking us.
“Tua’s young. Will he grow? Does he have that mind to create? Mike McDaniel, too. Mike Martz was great with that. We put our two minds together and created a lot of really good fun stuff to counter teams trying to do certain things to us. If they were going to blitz us, great. We had the counter to that. If they wanted to be physical with us, great. We had the counter to that. That’s going to be the sign here with Mike McDaniel and Tua together. As teams change up the way they play you, what are you going to do to change up so you can still be successful against it?”
This is a defining moment for both individuals central to all Dolphins success.
It’s been night and day from the previous regime. Tagovailoa and McDaniel clearly enjoy each other — this is as productive, as strong, as honest of a HC-QB relationship as you’ll find in the NFL. Now, they need to concoct a master plan in the corner of this ring. If the Dolphins stay stagnant, OK, they’ll beat the bad teams. But Warner believes they’ll inevitably lose to the good teams. They’ll be one-and-done in the postseason.
Tagovailoa possesses some of the same traits as Warner but he is not ready to say the third-year quarterback is prepared to make a Warner-sized leap.
“I feel like I’ve done certain things that are better than anybody who’s ever played this game,” Warner says. “So I’m not ready to say Tua is there. I’m not ready to say his accuracy, combination, arm strength is what I had. I’m not ready to say his processing is anywhere close to what I had. So, I’m not ready to say that. His ability to anticipate and be accurate on certain kinds of throws? Without a doubt. His ability to use his eyes, his ability to anticipate — at times this year — I’ve said it’s maybe the best in the league. There are some really good things that he does. But the complete package, I don’t personally see anything close to what I became as a quarterback. Yet. Again, he’s still young and he’s still new in the system. I see some traits where I’ll say, ‘Yeah, that’s something I had. That’s something that I did.’ It can help you be very successful in this league. But there has to be more than just that piece.”
Which brings us to the 200 million dollar question: Is processing a trait a quarterback inherently possesses or can it be learned?
Warner spends many… many… many hours trying to answer this himself. He’s blown away by the meteoric progress of Philadelphia’s Jalen Hurts in this department. Nobody is playing the position better in his eyes and the reason is Hurts’ mental acuity, an ability to swiftly work through his reads. There was no specific offseason drill that served as a magic wand. Hurts is merely more comfortable in the Eagles’ offense which lends itself to say Hurts possessed that processing gene all along and only needed to become fully comfortable “with where he needed to have his eyes,” Warner explains, “and what he was looking at.”
And that becomes the key question with Tua: Is it just a matter of time?
That alone will decide Miami’s fate in 2022, and beyond.
“We’ve seen a lot of guys who are really smart on a board and if they get 40 seconds to tell you what to do on a play, they can tell you all the nuances,” Warner says. “Now, if you shrink that down to four seconds, they can’t do it. They can give you one or two pieces but they can’t give you all the pieces. So that becomes the question because you don’t know until they’re in those moments. You don’t know until they have to do it whether they can do it. But I’m not sure if it’s a learned trait or not. I don’t know the answer because I can’t get inside somebody’s brain and see what they did last year and what they do this year. Or I can’t see if all of a sudden things start going off and it’s just muddled in there and they can’t clear it up.
“Right now, it doesn’t look like he does a great job of processing beyond what he sees initially. He processes that information well and when he needs to make a throw, he can process information on where that ball needs to go and what the timing is and what the trajectory of the ball is. That’s great. But I’m talking about, OK, that’s not there. Now, what do I need to see and where do I need to go and how fast can I get there? He hasn’t gotten to that point yet.”
There is a silver lining, a reason to believe Tagovailoa can Taser defenses for a long, long time.
For starters, he is throwing to one of the fastest humans to ever play the sport. Get Hill the ball and he’s a cheat code. But what Tagovailoa lacks — a superior physical trait — could work to his benefit. He’s not 6 foot 5, 247 pounds like Josh Allen in the open field. Nor does he improvise like Patrick Mahomes or leave defenders in the dust like Lamar Jackson. If Tagovailoa is going to last, Tagovailoa will need to win from the pocket. He doesn’t have a choice.
He won’t ever be tempted to tuck the ball and lean into a physical trait. He must process.
Warner gets frustrated with the Mahomes-Allen-Jackson trio at times because, while they all wow spectators with highlight-reel plays, their physical gifts bait them into not reading the big picture of a play. Some games, it appears they are truly seeing the field. Some games, it appears they’re not seeing anything.
“Where it can be a huge blessing at times,” Warner says, “I think it becomes more of a detriment. I still believe you have to win this game within the pocket.”
Tagovailoa cannot bail himself out. But when push comes to shove — when you’re talking championships, not 13-win regular seasons — you don’t want to have to bail yourself out.
You want to hit your layups, repeatedly, and only stray when necessary. Escapability should be the icing on the cake. Not the cake itself.
When the greats like Mahomes struggle, it’s because they’re trying to play Superman.
“Tua, he’s going to have to be a guy who gets to be making the layups almost every single time if he’s going to be successful,” Warner says. “And I’m OK with guys that are forced to do that because I do believe it’s the best way to win in this league consistently over time. The combination of those two things is obviously always going to be better than just doing one thing. But the more I watch these guys, the more I wonder, even if you have a level of athleticism or playmaking, will you ever be a guy who consistently plays the game from inside the pocket? Like you’re capable of, like you need to? I don’t know the answer to that. I’ve seen a number of games this year with Mahomes where I’m like, “Play the game!” He’s just doing too much and trying to make the big play and falling away from his technique and missing things that are right in front of him that I’ve seen him make before. It lends itself to the game becoming so much harder than it has to be even for a great guy like Mahomes.”
Mahomes wiggles his way out of those jams better than everyone. Maybe better than anyone in league history.
But when the playmaking is the basis for any quarterback’s game, Warner still believes every game is a “crapshoot.” It becomes a case of a quarterback needing to make enough big plays to win instead of having a total command of the defense for 60 minutes. Eventually, this bites you in the ass. Kansas City’s offensive line did not play well in the Super Bowl against Tampa Bay two years ago, fine. But Mahomes’ own play style is also to blame. Per NextGen Stats, he ran around the field for 497 yards that night.
He was hyperactive. He tried to do too much.
“They got blown out in the Super Bowl,” Warner says. “He’s too good to get blown out in the Super Bowl. But if he gets away from playing the game, it can happen to everybody. Josh, the same way. When he gets away from playing the game and just wants to run around and try to make plays, he’s not nearly as good even though we’re wowed by the three or four plays they do make. Patrick Mahomes last week, the little flip for the touchdown he had. If he read that right, he had a huge play to the other side on a deep corner route. On time. Read it right. Now, he made that play but that play easily could’ve been a sack and a negative play. He got away with it there but for most other guys, that’s a sack. Give me the layups. Give me the reads you were supposed to make. And we have a chance to win.”
It’s no coincidence that the Greatest Show on Turf excelled in a climate-controlled environment. With no wind, no snow, no rain, the timing was heavenly.
That will not be the case at Highmark Stadium this weekend. As rough as the last two weeks have been, this will be an even tougher task. (As I write this sentence in Western New York, it’s raining and it’s cold and it’s miserable.)
Warner can genuinely see Tagovailoa’s career arc traveling either direction. For his name to be used alongside the game’s best — right now — he’ll need to perform. Burrow bounced back from his five-interception opener. Allen has had his share of “bummer” games in 2022. Mahomes, too. The best of the best find a way to bounce back.
This Miami offense has most certainly hit a wall. The greats find their counterpunch.
It’s Tua’s time to find his.
“I’m concerned because I haven’t seen it yet,” Warner says. “These last couple weeks I’ve seen more of what we saw the first couple years with Tua. The holding the ball. The being unsure of himself when the No. 1 read isn’t there. He’s really good when it’s really good. Now, when things aren’t as good, can he still be that guy? So, I’m just not convinced yet. Like anything, you’ve got to convince me. In this league, we don’t just check the box and say, ‘We’re going to give you the benefit of the doubt until you don’t do it. It’s the opposite. When you take that step up, you’ve got to prove to us that you belong in that category with the best quarterbacks in the league. You were doing it for a while, but now you’ve hit a snag. Now, you have to show us.”
“Somebody’s hit you in the mouth. You’ve got to show us that you can counter that to be that guy still.”
ICYMI, our series on Tua Tagovailoa below…
Part I: Belief
Part II: The Takeover
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