Tua Tagovailoa’s time as Dolphins savior will come

Tua Tagovailoa wakes up every day with the same question.

Is he the lion or the gazelle?

It’s a saying that his grandfather passed down to him in his youth. The point of which is both the prey and predator do the same thing every day but only one is pursuing the other. To him, he is the predator pursuing his goals.

HIs goals were to play college football, win the national championship, get drafted to the NFL and become the starting quarterback leading his team to the Super Bowl. Half of those boxes have been checked but his time as the starting quarterback of the Miami Dolphins will have to wait. Head coach Brian Flores announced on Monday that veteran Ryan Fitzpatrick will begin the season as the starter, using the unusual, pandemic stricken offseason where there was no OTAs, minicamp or preseason games as reasonable justification.

The story of Tagovailoa’s destiny with the Dolphins began a year ago, when after another lackluster failed attempt to returned to the playoffs, owner Stephen Ross fired head coach Adam Gase and overhauled the front office. The team’s leadership now consisted of a black general manager and a black head coach, at a time when either of which are as rare as finding a Nintendo Switch on stock.

The Dolphins began the previous season trading away most of their veteran players, the last vestiges of the Gase era, and were set up to lose as many games as possible. The thought of 0-16 seemed realistic when they were outscored 102-10 in their first two games of the season.

The goal was clear, sacrifice the 2019 season to guarantee as high of a draft pick as possible to take Tagovailoa. This was the consensus with the team brass, media and fan base. In a bizarre, twilight zone reality, the fans were rooting for the home team to lose.

With Josh Rosen starting under center, the Dolphins were well on their way to 0-16 with 10 more games to go. It was almost as if he was brought in from Arizona to provide false hope while assuring offensive failure. Head coach Brian Flores and players had to constantly reject the notion of tanking.

It was only fitting that the Dolphins first win came against Gase’s new team, the New York Jets. The rise of Joe Burrow and LSU and Tagovailoa’s season ending hip injury in November made it so that the Dolphins could afford to win a few games and have a chance to claim their prize. Miami finished the season 5-11 after starting 0-7, which lead to the belief that the Dolphins have the right head coach for the job.

It all became worth it at the end when the Alabama quarterback with fifth overall pick of the NFL Draft. When Tagovailoa eventually becomes the starter, the Dolphins will be the only team in the NFL with a person of color at quarterback, head coach and general manager. The point of that, as Tagovailoa put it during his lone media session in August was “That whoever can get the job done for us, that’s who we are going to go with.”

Sports has an interesting way of converging timelines. When Tagovailoa was a freshman at Alabama, linebacker Kamu Grugier-Hill was winning the Super Bowl for the Philadelphia Eagles. The two Hawaiians united in Davie during training camp, which helped provide Tagovailoa a sense of familiarity within the locker room.

Despite entering this season as a backup, Tagovailoa had a successful training camp. He proved that he’s healthy enough to play. He’s learning from Fitzpatrick, whom he called “a coach” and “a mentor on and off the field.”

Tagovailoa spent the entire training camp earning the respect of his teammates. Offensive tackle Ereck Flowers pointed to his improvement in the classroom. Offensive guard Jesse Davis said he noticed him being increasingly vocal and show more confidence with every week. Running back Jordan Howard said he couldn’t even tell that Tua even had a hip injury less than a year ago.

Even the Dolphins defense took notice. Defensive end Emmanuel Ogbah noticed how much of a scrambling threat he is in practice. Cornerback Eric Rowe pointed to his arm strength as a factor that makes him a increasingly hard quarterback to defend.

Some quarterbacks were able to hit the ground running in the rookie year, and the best of them, such as Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers, took some time in the bench to learn. Tagovailoa’s time will come soon, and the Dolphins will soon find out whether it was all worth it.

Tony Capobianco is a lead photographer and sometimes writer for Five Reasons Sports Network.