Tua Tagovailoa this year is playing as well as he has at any point in his career. And the Dolphins are still the longest of shots to make the playoffs.
That’s how bad things are for the Dolphins this year, who lost Sunday for the sixth time in seven games, a 30-27 heartbreaker against the Buffalo Bills.
Miami Dolphins’ Tua Tagovailoa Stays Hot
For the second straight week, Tagovailoa had the best performance by a Dolphins quarterback in a loss since at least 2019, according to PFN’s proprietary QB+ metric.
Tagovailoa graded out as a B+ after completing 25 of 28 passes for 231 yards, two touchdowns, and no interceptions Sunday. He outplayed Buffalo’s Josh Allen, who graded out as a C+ despite throwing three touchdown passes.
Tua Tagovailoa. Waddle. Yes. pic.twitter.com/TyGh9OePb8
— Bobby Shouse (@B_Shousejr) November 3, 2024
What’s more, Tagovailoa posted the ninth-highest EPA per dropback in the 2024 NFL season Sunday (.62). He’s the only one in the top 10 whose performance came in a loss.
Tua and Miami’s offense punted just once Sunday.
They came away with points on five of their seven non-end-of-half possessions. And probably would have gone six-for-seven had Raheem Mostert not fumbled on the Bills’ 48-yard line on the Dolphins’ first drive of the second half.
It was Mostert’s second costly fumble in three weeks, and his sixth in his last 16 games.
“I thought he was running really well,” Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said of Mostert postgame. “We talk about it all the time, but … the guys you can’t see are what you’re most vulnerable to. He’s gotta fix that. I appreciate his effort. I thought he ran as hard as he’s ran all season. I thought it was a big part of our success, but we can’t turn the ball over, especially to that team and expect to win the football game.”
The bigger issue for the Dolphins? They can’t hold second-half leads. They’ve blown them in each of the last three weeks — all games Miami has lost.
Tagovailoa has been like an ace starting pitcher let down by his bullpen the last two weeks. Since returning from a four-week stint on IR, he’s completed 80.3% of his passes, averaging 7 yards per attempt with four touchdowns and no interceptions (116.2 rating).
His Week 8 and Week 9 performances were the 11th and 14th-best of his career (win or lose), per QB+.
“I thought Tua played one of his best games since we’ve been working together on finding [his receivers] and taking what the defense was giving him,” McDaniel said.
Added Tagovailoa: “We took a step in the right direction as a team collectively. This is the ball that we want to show on Sundays, but there’s a lot of things we’re always gonna have to clean up and we’re gonna continue to skin the cat however we need to. And we’re gonna move forward with that.”
Health-willing, Tagovailoa will have nine more chances to improve. But at 2-6 and two and a half games back of the final Wild Card spot, it’ll probably be too little, too late for a Dolphins team that entered the season with Super Bowl hopes.
And that’s a shame, considering they’re getting playoff-caliber play out of their quarterback.