Omar Kelly: Malik Willis needs to become everything Tua Tagovailoa wasn't

Omar Kelly, Miami Herald on Mar 9, 2026

Published in Football

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MIAMI — The “Tank for Tua” era — or error — was rooted in failure from the very start, and that’s exactly how Tua Tagovailoa’s tenure as the Miami Dolphins’ starting quarterback should be remembered.

One misstep after another, an avalanche of miscalculations, and doubling down on bad decisions.

It was yet another era of failure for South Florida’s once proud NFL franchise.

There’s no shame in making mistakes, even if the franchise has made the same mistakes for two-plus decades.

The important thing is to take the lessons that come with those missteps, and turn them into something useful.

That’s why the Dolphins must digest these valuable teaching tools from the Tagovailoa era, making sure the past six years haven’t been a complete waste of time.

They need that knowledge to effectively turn the page to Malik Willis, who agreed to a three-year deal with Miami that can potentially pay him $67.5 million, and fully guarantees him $45 million, and to do so Miami needs an autopsy on where things went wrong with the last quarterback.

The Dolphins were intentionally bad for a season (2019), with the goal of putting the franchise in position to select a quarterback early in the 2020 NFL draft. And they didn’t want just any quarterback.

This franchise wanted Tagovailoa, but he just so happened to suffer a career-threatening hip injury that season at Alabama.

The lesson there? Tanking for a player is a risky gamble for multiple reasons. Just look at the mediocre quarterback talent available in the 2026 NFL Draft, which a year ago draftniks thought would be stocked with big names such as Arch Manning and Dante Moore, who each returned to college.

But back to the failures of Tua ...

Miami passed on a prototype quarterback (Justin Herbert) for a player with an aura, and a hip injury. Unfortunately for the Dolphins franchise, Tagovailoa’s aura never morphed into dominance, especially in games against upper echelon competition.

Early issues

And do we know if that hip injury ever properly healed?

Some people inside the organization saw the warts early.

It can be debated whether Brian Flores ever liked, or wanted Tagovailoa. He seemingly conveyed his unpopular opinions of the soft-spoken quarterback early on, but few paid attention.

Who remembers the aggressive line of questions Flores peppered Tagovailoa with at the NFL Combine back in 2020, before Miami even drafted him.

Who remembered that Tagovailoa and his camp complained about that aggressive Combine interview session?

There was Flores’ proposal to select an offensive lineman with the fifth overall pick in the 2020 draft, and then follow up that strategy by drafting Jordan Love at 18.

The problem is, nobody seemingly supported/endorsed that idea, which in hindsight might have worked out better for the Dolphins.

And then there was the not-so-subtle courtship of Deshaun Watson when the former Houston Texans quarterback, who was engulfed in a ton of drama for inappropriate behavior while getting massages, was on the trade market in the 2021 season, despite the fact that Tagovailoa was cutting his teeth as Miami’s starter.

The goal of every NFL team should be to find quarterbacks with prototypical size, upper echelon arm strength and solid mobility, that’s the NFL’s new quarterback blueprint.

Tua’s shortcomings

Tagovailoa never possessed the frame, the arm, or the athleticism.

But Tagovailoa was good enough, especially after uniting with Mike McDaniel, the head coach Miami hired to replace Flores and specifically bring out the best in Tagovailoa’s game. They worked wonderfully together for two seasons (2022 and 2023), and put up a ton of pace setting numbers, and wins, until Tagovailoa’s arm lost its velocity around mid-November.

He struggled so much opposing defensive coaches openly admitted he became easy to defend since cornerbacks could sit in zone all game waiting for him to make a mistake, and safeties weren’t required to drop more than 40 yards deep because he no longer possessed the arm strength to throw it that far.

Confronted about what was happening to Tagovailoa’s game, and Miami’s inability to run a hurry-up offense with him behind center, McDaniel eventually benched Tagovailoa for the final three games of the season, turning over the team to rookie quarterback Quinn Ewers.

Clearly, the signing of Willis changes things for all parties.

After by trading safety Minkah Fitzpatrick, who was arguably the team’s second-best defender last season, away to the New York Jets for a 2026 seventh-round pick, it’s clear and apparent the Dolphins are rebuilding.

That likely means going young, and cheap at most positions, building the 2026 roster.

Let’s hope the Dolphins finally have a quarterback who can do more than sell hope, and that Willis will turn into everything Tagovailoa never became, if not more.

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