The 2023 NFL season held lots of promise for the Miami Dolphins, but it ended with a rough 26-7 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in the Wild Card round of the playoffs.
The Chiefs, the defending Super Bowl champs, held down Miami’s normally explosive offense, and Miami quarterback Tua Tagovailoa completed just 20 of 39 pass attempts for 199 yards and only one touchdown.
That performance revived talk that perhaps Tagovailoa isn’t all that, but per Ari Meirov, GM Chris Grier said the Dolphins want to keep him long-term.
#Dolphins GM Chris Grier said today that the goal is to have Tua Tagovailoa in Miami long-term.
Tagovailoa has one year remaining on his rookie contract. Grier said they’ll continue to communicate with him and his representation in the offseason. pic.twitter.com/HivDe6OLNE
— Ari Meirov (@MySportsUpdate) January 15, 2024
During the regular season, Tagovailoa completed 69.3 percent of his passes and led the league with 4,624 passing yards while throwing 29 touchdown darts.
He was named to his Pro Bowl while driving the Dolphins to the second-highest scoring average in the NFL and an 11-6 regular-season record.
However, the bone of contention was their inability to defeat teams with winning records, and in fact, they only defeated one such team all season — the Dallas Cowboys, who were a disappointment in their own right, in a two-point victory in Week 16.
While Miami was 7-2 at home, they were just 4-4 away from Hard Rock Stadium during the regular season.
In Saturday’s game, they had to endure frigid conditions at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, and Tagovailoa, a native of Hawaii, simply couldn’t deal with the extreme cold.
It was quite an adjustment for the Dolphins to go from the tropical climate of South Florida to the virtual freezer that was GEHA Field, but they have shown more growth in the last couple of years than they had in decades.
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