Tua Tagovailoa went from thinking he was terrible at football at the beginning of his NFL career to being an MVP candidate at various points through the past two seasons, and leading the league in passing yards in 2023. Despite scary concussion issues that threatened to force him into early retirement, Tua persevered and has ultimately flourished under head coach Mike McDaniel, despite how badly his career began under McDaniel's predecessor, Brian Flores. Yet another complete catastrophe in a long line of ex-Bill Belichick assistants who alienated their locker rooms with their unoriginal, fake-tough guy version of The Patriot Way —
looking at you, Josh McDaniels , Joe Judge, Matt Patricia, et al. — Flores apparently only knew one way to coach Tua: Toxic negative reinforcement. Some guys respond to that. An increasing amount of modern players don't. Just a thought: If you're a defensive head coach in the heavily offense-skewed modern NFL, you might want to, you know, build a decent relationship with your franchise quarterback. Instead,
Flores was reportedly preoccupied with pursuing Deshaun Watson . Dude must be a great judge of character, eh? Anyway, Tua spoke to Dan Le Batard in the most candid terms I've seen about the stark contrast between the leadership styles of Flores and McDaniel:
"To put it in simplest terms, if you woke up every morning, and I told you 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 right... And then you have somebody else come in and tell you, dude, you are the best fit for this. You are accurate. You are the best, whatever you are [...] how would it make you feel listening to one or the other... I don't care who you are. You could be the President of the United States. If you have a terrible person that's telling you things that you don't want to hear, or that that you probably shouldn't be hearing, you're going to start to believe that about yourself." https://twitter.com/LeBatardShow/status/1825525301029294167 Imagine getting your big shot to be an NFL head coach and being this much of an idiot when it comes to the most important position in sports. Brian Flores tried to spin his underwhelming tenure into a
racial discrimination lawsuit . Quickly on that: I agree that minority coaches face a much tougher battle to get head coaching gigs, largely because a lot of minority coaches tend to get their bigger promotions on the defensive side of the ball. Again, the modern NFL rules favor offense, and just look at all the head coaches who call plays. McDaniel is mixed race, but there's Andy Reid, Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVay, Kevin Stefanski, Shane Steichen, Sean Payton, Doug Pederson (at times), Mike McCarthy, Kevin O'Connell, Matt LaFleur... might've missed somebody. You get the point. There aren't many black or minority offensive coordinators, either. But when it comes to Flores and the merits of his coaching, it sounds like the dude was just an a**hole. He's doing just fine for himself as O'Connell's defensive coordinator for the Minnesota Vikings. The more that comes out about how Flores carried himself in Miami, though, the less likely it seems that he'll ever get another crack at a head coaching vacancy. Anyway, everyone can keep hating and sleeping on Tua all they want. I'm not bailing on him for losing his playoff debut in historically cold temperatures against the eventual Super Bowl champion Chiefs. Patrick Mahomes completed just 56% of his throws that day against a Dolphins defense that hated playing for departed coordinator Vic Fangio and was signing old heads off the street to play on the edge because they were so decimated by injuries. Tua will just keep balling in McDaniel's cutting-edge scheme, keep thriving under the coach's positive reinforcement, and keep throwing dots like these for years to come. Get used to it if you ain't already. https://twitter.com/NFL/status/1824951156138999827
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