Speaking on his radio show, The Herd, on Fox Sports Radio and FS1 this Monday, Colin Cowherd stated that he believes the Miami Dolphins should play Tua Tagovailoa in their Week 1 game at Foxborough.
In this feature of his talk show, as described by Fox, Colin discusses Tua Tagovailoa and Dak Prescott on today’s show. Hear why he thinks Tua should start Week 1 for the Miami Dolphins and why he thinks Dak Prescott is difficult to truly evaluate as an NFL QB. The full show is available here, this particular snippet is available below.
He began the segment by talking about how he usually feels about rookie quarterbacks, with “I find some of these young quarterbacks, and I like some, I don’t like others.” before continuing with “I like Sam Darnold a lot, Baker Mayfield drove me nuts.”
Immediately after that, Cowherd compared that to this year’s first two quarterback selections. He told his audience, “I like Tua a lot, and Joe Burrow’s good, but I don’t think he’s as good as everybody’s saying he is.”
The conversation came about after a recent comment from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Head Coach, and ‘QB Guru’, Bruce Arians. He was asked on his opinion on whether he’d play Tua in Week 1 or not, to which Arians replied: “you don’t learn anything holding a clipboard.”
Now this is a controversial opinion, but one that I’m sure many of you out there agree with.
Before we jump to any conclusions however, let’s break down why Colin believes the Dolphins should play Tua.
Firstly, Colin states “I believe I see it differently today, than I did a couple of years ago, I think it’s time to play Tua.” Telling everyone that due to the likes of Darnold and Deshaun Watson being thrown in there straight away, he believes it could be the right thing to do.
In this clip, we’re told that he always used to think, bring them in, let them sit and watch. But now he’s become “a draft them and let them play” kind of guy.
Cowherd named his five key reasons for his change of heart on the show, with number 1 being the fact that the NFL has been adopting a tonne of college schemes, stating “They didn’t use to do that.” The new Fins Offensive Coordinator, Chan Gailey, was one of the first to do that.
Reason number 2, the introduction of better young offensive coaches doesn’t apply to the Dolphins and why they should play Tua, so we’ll skip past that onto the third reason.
That being the fact the NFL rules are changing to a more pro-offensive outlook. As Cowherd put it, “It makes it much easier to be dynamic, early.” This comes after the previously proposed vote on a pro-offensive alternative to the onside kick.
Had that rule been voted in teams could have chosen to attempt 2 4th&15 plays per game, directly after scoring.
His fourth reason was that nowadays pre-college QB development has become far more advanced than it used to be, with “All these young quarterbacks all have a hundred thousand reps before they’re juniors in high school.”
The final one was the price of rookie quarterbacks and the flexibility of their contracts. As Cowherd told us in the video “Back in 2010, Sam Bradford came in the NFL, as a rookie he never played a game, and cost $78 million.”
Compare that to now, where you can draft a rookie quarterback, who’s on little to nothing and then surround him with talent to make a run at a championship. The very next year with a new CBA in place, Cam Newton and the Carolina Panthers attempted that.
Now, if he didn’t have the injury history I’d do it 100%, I’d play Tua in Week 1. But he does. Ryan Fitzpatrick’s the starter for the first couple of games in 2020, in my opinion. He knows Chan Gailey’s scheme like the back of his hand and can create an example for Tua to follow.
I’m not saying sit Tua for the season either, I still think the Dolphins will play Tua in over 8 games, just not all 16 of them.
But that’s what I think, what do you think? Should the Dolphins play Tua in Week one?
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