Tua Tagovailoa Will Not Be Mahomes Or Allen, And That’s Fine
Look, Tua Tagovailoa will never be Patrick Mahomes or Josh Allen and that is completely fine. He does not have to be them to succeed. Tua can win without having elite arm strength, since there is more than one way to win in the National Football League.
If everyone needed an elite arm to win in the NFL, then the fun of the league would disappear. What fun would it be if everyone needed to be an otherworldly athlete with the same elite traits? Tristan Wirfs is an alien, if every offensive lineman had to be that way then the potential angle would be ruined. The beauty of life and the NFL is the ability to win in different ways, Tua further proves that in the NFL.
Although the Dolphins lost in Buffalo last night, they put up a great fight and Tua made some great plays. You can debate all you want about ‘almost’ interceptions or plays that should have been turnovers but I rate them all the same. If a play should have been a turnover, the player gets a negative grade worth the equivalent of if the defense caught the interception or recovered the fumble, and Josh Allen has been bad in that regard for five of his last seven games going into Saturday night football. You see the great throws, like against the Lions on Thanksgiving to win the game but you also see the plays that should result in turnovers. Allen has been getting lucky in regard to actual turnovers against turnover-worthy plays.
Allen tried to throw the game away against the Packers, he did throw the game away in Miami in week three, he threw it away against the Jets in New York, he tried to against the Lions, and actively tried to against the Patriots in New England. However, Allen has the strongest arm in the league. He’s able to take those chances, and be a little careless at times because he can make up for it with throws that only he and maybe four other quarterbacks in the world can make.
Will Tua Tagovailoa have one of the greatest arms in NFL history? No, he won’t. However, Tua wins with his brain and accuracy, which can be more than enough. Drew Brees never had the greatest arm or athletic ability, being able to win before the ball is even snapped is worth so much more than we are led to believe. I do not root for people to fail, I simply say things like I see them and Josh Allen has been very careless with the football for the last two months of the season. If Tua can win before a play even starts, that is worth more than raw arm strength and athletic ability. Situation matters.
