Colin Cowherd is no stranger to giving highly controversial opinions in the sporting world, but one of his latest takes is sure to cause a stir among Miami Dolphins fans.
Miami quarterback Tua Tagovailoa is having the best season of his young career, completing 65.5 percent of his pass attempts for 3,004 yards and 22 touchdowns against five interceptions. Miami has won eight of Tagovailoa’s 11 starts, and they look poised to lock down their first postseason berth since 2016.
But on Thursday’s episode of “The Herd with Colin Cowherd”, the veteran sports journalist boldly compared Tagovailoa to former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow. More specifically, Cowherd thinks Tagovailoa may simply be lightning in the bottle as opposed to a long-term answer at QB for Miami.
Here’s what Cowherd said on his show (transcriptions via Wil Leitner):
“I said about a month ago, what if Tua goes out west against these defenses, what happens when it’s cold, what happens when he goes up to a Cincinnati, or a Buffalo, or a Kansas City, and the weather is not warm… and he gets exposed? I got major pushback. The past couple weeks he’s faced really heavy pass rushes and he’s been absolutely awful… like Tim Tebow awful, like 3 for 17 awful. People forget the Tebow thing. Tebow won 7 straight games and reasonable people, excellent NFL people lost their collective minds…
Tua currently leads in Pro Bowl voting, Tebow led in jersey sales. They weren’t anywhere near the best player but we loved their ‘story’, and it’s a good ‘story’. The little guy that nobody believes in is rolling and crushing it. But I do wonder – if this game vs. the Bills completely unravels, are we looking at a guy who is probably capable of a winning streak but we fell in love with the ‘story’, instead of just trusting our eyes that don’t really lie?‘”
With all due respect to Cowherd, it’s quite the stretch to compare Tagovailoa to Tebow. The latter didn’t have the throwing mechanics or accuracy to be a long-term quarterback in the NFL, for starters.
Tebow completed 46.5 percent of pass attempts for the Broncos in the 2011 season. Five of his seven wins as Denver’s starter came via game-winning drives. Clearly, it wasn’t a sustainable long-term formula to success, and the Broncos knew it. Hence why they signed Peyton Manning in 2012 free agency.
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Tagovailoa’s completion percentage through his first three seasons was: 64.1 (in 2020), 67.8 (2021) and 65.5 here in 2022. This isn’t a guy who looks like a one-hit wonder by any means, but rather like a quarterback who’s only getting better every year.
There’s a reason Tagovailoa was once projected to be the first overall pick of the 2020 NFL Draft before he suffered a season-ending hip injury. And there’s a reason he went fifth overall to Miami in the ultra-deep 2020 draft class.
So yeah, it might be a little too early to Tagovailoa to a guy who last played a meaningful NFL snap 10 years ago.
