DAVIE, Florida – Despite the wonderful lift of Ryan Fitzpatrick, who led the Miami Dolphins to a 26-25 victory over the Las Vegas Raiders on Saturday night, coach Brian Flores said once again on Sunday that Tua Tagovailoa remains the defender its home.
Flores strongly disagreed with those outside the team building who believe that starting the veteran gives them the best chance to win.
“Tua brought us a spark in many other games. I think people will forget that just because we remember the last thing,” Flores said. “Speculation about what people want to speculate about what we should or shouldn’t do based on last night, I wouldn’t do that and forget the body of work throughout the season to include the latest as many Your games have started [eight]. I think he played pretty well.
“People may not agree, but I think we should agree not to agree in this case. This is my idea. It’s not based on a game or a quarter – there are a lot of practices that people don’t see, they go through that no one sees. But everyone wants to make a judgment and try to make a decision for us about what we should do without all this information. “
Flores’ defense against Tagovailoa comes a day after he put the debutant defender in the fourth quarter of the victory on Saturday’s return. He compared Fitzpatrick’s role as the eliminator of the ninth half coming to close a game and did not rule out calling his number again if the Dolphins are in a similar scenario. At the same time, Flores did not hesitate to name Tagovailoa the starter next Sunday against Buffalo Bills in a very important game “win and you are in the game” for the Dolphins playoffs.
It’s rare for a modern NFL team to have a two-quarterback system, but it looks like the 10-5 Dolphins are comfortable with a version of it as they try to make the playoffs for the first time since 2016. This is the second time Flores has moved to Tagovailoa in the fourth quarter of a close game (week 11 in Denver) and has twice returned to Tagovailoa as a starter.
Tagovailoa was very efficient, with a better touchdown to interception ratio (10 to 2 compared to 13 to 8 for Fitzpatrick) of the two defenders, but Fitzpatrick offered more field games (7.8 yards per try and 232.3 yards per game compared to Tagovailoa (6.3 yards / try and 161.4 passing yards per game) due to his desire to risk 50-50 balls.
Asked about his QB situation after a big win, Flores said that winning is the only thing that matters to him, no matter what people want to call their unusual rotation.
“I don’t want to put labels on it. The label is that we will do what we have to do to win. I owe it to the Dolphins fans, the players in that locker room, the people in the organization, that’s what we will always do,” Flores said. “So two-person QB, three-person QB, five-person QB, whatever we have to do to win, that’s what we’re going to do to win.”
After the game, Fitzpatrick and Tagovailoa both said they believe in Flores to make the best decision for the team, strongly supporting the other when not playing. There have been no indications of Dolphins locker room problems throughout the QB switches this season, showing that Flores has a good momentum for his team and said he believes in Tagovailoa now and in the future.
“Tua played well. He made a lot of improvements during the season. He’s developing,” Flores said. “I don’t make judgments and decisions based on a single court. There are a lot of things that go into the decisions we make – conversations and not just a game or a quarter. Tua has done a lot of good things for this team. He knows that. The team he knows that. “