As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. Thus, Miami’s winning streak had to end at some point, and it happened on Sunday against the San Francisco 49ers. 

The Dolphins lost a weird football game on the road to a talented team—that sometimes happens in the NFL. However, what it made weird was the play of Miami’s quarterback, Tua Tagovailoa. 

Make no mistake, Tagovailoa was bad on Sunday. There won’t be any silver linings in this week’s review. We’ll show some of his good throws (as always), but we’re not going to beat around the bush either. 

With that said, there’s no need to panic either. Good quarterbacks and teams have bad games. It’s objectively funny Tagovailoa’s worse game came against Brock Purdy, of all people, but QB vs. QB stats shouldn’t hold any merit in any good-faith quarterback discussion anyway. 

Let’s dive into the stuff that should be a part of good faith discussion. 

The Good Stuff 

Sunday still had flashes of the quarterback Tagovailoa has become this season and throws like this one is a great example of that. 

Tagovailoa does a great job getting through his progressions to hit tight end Durham Smythe. There’s an argument he’s trying to hold 49ers LB Fred Warner by looking to his right before coming back to his left, but either way, this is excellent quarterbacking. 

He drives this throw into a tight window, preventing the safety from breaking it up on contact and preventing Warner from getting a hand on it underneath. 

Tagovailoa has made throws like this into the middle of the all season, and Sunday’s poor performance wasn’t because he was afraid to make these tight throws. They were still present, but they were a little less consistent. 

In last week’s rendition of this article, we mentioned Tagovailoa would have to create some completions under pressure to beat the 49ers. For the most part, that didn’t happen on Sunday. 

Despite an overall lack of success, this completion to Hill is probably the best play Tagovailoa made all day, and it definitely qualifies as creating under pressure. 

Pressure is created on this play when Connor Williams runs into Alec Ingold while trying to pull and seal the edge. This gives the 49ers a free run at Tagovailoa, who does a tremendous job sidestepping the rusher. 

Then, he just flips out a well-thrown pass to Tyreek Hill. This play requires a good amount of anticipation and trust in Hill winning his rep, which he does. Again, this is high-level quarterbacking from Tagovailoa. 

The previous two throws are worth discussing because of the level of difficulty they required. This throw makes it into this category for what it says about Tagovailoa’s mentality as a quarterback. 

This throw is not difficult. The best part about this play is how quickly Tagovailoa triggers when he sees the right-side deep safety hammer down on Trent Sherfield’s crossing route. That’s routine for NFL quarterbacks throwing this route against this coverage. 

What’s most important about this throw is it came directly after two interceptions. It was right after the game started to get away from Miami. Although it eventually did, Tagovailoa reminded everyone he’s capable of bouncing back in the flow of bad games. 

This is something that popped up on his film last season (remember the Atlanta game?), but he’s cut down on interceptions this season, so he hasn’t had to show much resolve this season. Still, it’s important to remember Tagovailoa, for all his faults, is a gamer. 

The Bad Stuff

No “meh stuff” this week. We’re diving straight into the #ungood stuff. One of the most hard-to-explain parts of Tagovailoa’s performance from Sunday are misses like this one. 

There were several throws from clean pockets that just weren’t precise in the way fans have grown accustomed to seeing. The 49ers’ defense deserves a ton of credit for their game plan and the way they executed on Sunday, but none of that forced this pass to be so low. 

This pocket is clean, and Jaylen Waddle is wide open. If Tagovailoa hits him in the chest, this is a first down and extends Miami’s drive. Could Waddle have caught it? Sure, but that’s not really the point. There’s no reason he should’ve been forced to make a difficult catch in the first place. 

There’s not a lot of analysis to provide on this one other than to say this wasn’t a one-off. There are a bunch of misses like this on Sunday’s film. 

Tagovailoa gets a little more of a pass for this one since he’s got pressure in his face. However, given the amount of separation created at the top of the route, this is probably a throw he should hit. 

This miss also demonstrates Tagovailoa’s limitations in arm strength. I’m sure you’re asking how that can be possible when the pass was overthrown and not underthrown. For starters, distance is not an indication of arm strength—velocity is. 

Tagovailoa gets sped up by the pressure and can’t make this throw in rhythm. So, he musters the strength of the gods and the ball just floats on him. Watch how long it takes for this pass to arrive at the sideline. 

Off-platform throws like this are difficult for a quarterback with his limited velocity. It’s part of the reason his ceiling is capped as a quarterback. It doesn’t make him “bad” by any stretch, but it’s a limitation of his game without a doubt. When things aren’t perfect around Tagovailoa, his limitations start to pop up more often. 

Time to talk about interceptions, something we haven’t had to do in a long time. On initial watch, this INT looked to be mostly the fault of Jeff Wilson. On the broadcast, it looked like he had fallen down while running his route. 

Upon further review, Wilson is still at fault, but so is Tagovailoa. Wilson doesn’t even appear to be running a route. He runs out there and looks to be blocking the linebacker. This isn’t a choice route or an angle route. Wilson likely got the play call wrong. 

Tagovailoa still deserves blame because he honestly should’ve just taken a sack. Robert Hunt loses almost immediately, which causes immediate pressure. Now, pause the video at the five-second mark. 

Tagovailoa is getting hit and going to the ground, Wilson’s back is to him, and there are two 49ers defenders right in Wilson’s area anyway. 

It’s just a flat-out bad decision to throw the ball there. Sometimes, Tagovailoa needs to take a sack (a problem he’s admitted he’s still working on, so this criticism isn’t out of left field), and this is one of those times. 

Wilson deserves his share of the blame, but Tagovailoa doesn’t deserve a free pass either. 

This interception is much easier to explain because nobody else is at fault besides Tagovailoa. As we mentioned earlier, good quarterbacks have bad games sometimes, and Sunday just wasn’t Tagovailoa’s day. 

The 49ers’ defense made his life hard throughout the game by creating pressure with twists and blitzes and by disguising different coverages throughout the contest. 

Did they rattle Tagovailoa at this point in the game causing him to miss this throw he hits 99 out of 100 times? Maybe. Either way, it doesn’t matter because there’s no getting around how poor of a throw this was. 

This INT being as bad as it was does make his touchdown pass to Hill we included earlier slightly more impressive if you’re into moral victories. 

Conclusion 

As we stated at the top of this piece, we were not going to beat around the bush this week. This was Tagovailoa’s worse game of the season by far. 

Here’s the updated game by rankings 

These rankings are based on the film. Not stats. Not QB wins. Not whatever the hell Emmanuel Acho is ranting about. Just the film. Additionally, the games are not ranked in their respective tier.

Tier 1 is the best. Tier 1.5 is good but just a couple of mistakes that kept it from being “great.” Tier 2 is solid, quality play but nothing special. Tier 3 is “below average.” Tier 4 is “dreadfully bad.”

Tier 1: Buffalo Bills, Cleveland Browns 

Tier 1.5: Baltimore Ravens (this is tough because he was basically a different player after halftime)

Tier 2: Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions, Houston Texans

Tier 3: Pittsburgh Steelers, New England Patriots 

Tier 4: San Francisco 49ers 

Before you rage quit seeing where the 49ers game ended up on this list, let’s take a walk down memory lane. When Tagovailoa returned from injury against the Steelers, we asserted he had played his worst game of the season, but there was nothing to panic about. 

Although his performance on Sunday was worse, the messaging remains the same. Overreacting to one-game sample sizes—good or bad—is never a good strategy when evaluating quarterbacks. 

Tagovailoa has a great chance to get back to form on Sunday night against a porous Chargers defense. Let’s see if he does before pushing the panic button.

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