A NO-LOOK PASS? IT’S FROM TAGOVAILOA, WHO HUSHES THE END OF FIELDS
Nowhere is the offense more explosive than Miami, where Tua has overcome a concussion crisis to lead the Dolphins, as opposed to a continuing Chicago farce where the QB, GM and coach aren’t equipped
Please don’t ask about the status of The Great American Quarterback. The new crackling name is Tuanigamanuolepola Tagovailoa, who looked concussed last year for the rest of his walking days but then came Sunday: He threw a no-look shovel pass in a 70-point pounding. Healthy and well, for now, this was his 10th straight victory over a coach with a Super Bowl win — Sean Payton, who shouldn’t have left Fox Sports — and if he and the Miami Dolphins maintain this rocking blitz, he might be the one lifting the Vince Lombardi Trophy.
“So proud of our guys. We didn’t let our foot off the gas,” said Tagovailoa, not crediting a creative master named Mike McDaniel, who was hired as an intern by Mike Shanahan in Denver, then turned around 18 years later to score more points against the Broncos than any NFL team since 1966. If Tua and the boys weren’t lifted one play into the fourth quarter, were we looking at 100 instead of a 70-20 shellacking?
Come on. What’s the deal with the right-handed shovel pass when he’s a lefty? The play will be highlighted on every program until he tries another. “It was a no-look. Oooo, whatever that was,” Tagovailoa said. “Take that for what it was. But it was a touchdown and we like touchdowns over here. So that was awesome.”
What McDaniel has done, other than run off the field from a halftime interview, is secure a rash of speed burners. Can you imagine if Tyreek Hill, not kept by Andy Reid, beats the Kansas City Chiefs for an AFC title? It’s not worth worrying about at present when Patrick Mahomes can take care of a teammate, Travis Kelce, who succeeded in asking Taylor Swift to sit beside his mother and watch him play. The month is September, yet these are questions worth addressing in a league where Justin Fields not only said “F it” to his position as Bears quarterback and lets us wonder if Chicago will try an 0-17 tank and win the No. 1 pick next year.
Too bad general manager Ryan Poles, who wasn’t publicly honest last week about his defensive coordinator’s resignation over inappropriate behavior, didn’t isolate on C.J. Stroud last spring. After watching tapes of Fields, Poles said he wasn’t “absolutely blown away” by other possible QBs he could have taken with the lead pick. Maybe he should have ignored the rotten Fields, whose “robotic” mouth led him to complete 5 of 13 passes for 39 yards and three sacks while Mahomes was taking a 41-0 lead. He could have watched Stroud bomb away for two touchdowns and 280 yards in Houston’s 37-17 victory in Jacksonville.
“We drafted the right guy. Man, he's a leader,” Texans tight end Brevin Jordan said of Stroud. “He's a phenomenal player and a phenomenal guy with God-given talent. Dude, he's unbelievable.”
This is what happens in Chicago: an abysmal operation, run by the McCaskeys, hire a GM and coach who aren’t remotely worthy of their roles. Now the question becomes how long the Bears will keep Matt Eberflus, who hired Alan Williams to be his defensive boss until he the team’s human resources unit forced him to abruptly quit. Some national media believe the Bears have wrecked Fields. They’ve ruined each other, the normal case at Halas Hall, as Fox insider Jay Glazer said beforehand: “Right now, the jury is still out whether he’s their quarterback of the future … Justin Fields still has a ways to go to convince the Bears he’s their quarterback, and that’s the reason they went out and got another No. 1 pick for this year’s draft.” Fields exited the game early in the fourth quarter with a head injury before returning to throw a TD pass in a 41-10 blowout, which left the Bears with a 13-game losing streak. Why was he allowed to remain in the game?
“I need to be better,” said Fields, with no drama. “I’m looking at the big picture, life in general to be honest with you. This past week has had me kind of look at this like, ‘What are the important things in life?’ … These past couple of weeks have made me appreciate the little things in life, like being able to play this game. Every opportunity I get to go out and play, I’m going to have fun, I’m going to play my hardest and just thank God for giving me the ability to play.”
Others weren’t as syrupy. “Embarrassing,” wrote Jim McMahon, who helped the Bears to their one Super Bowl victory and qualifies, I suppose, as their best quarterback.
As I’ve stated before, the father of the Heisman Trophy winner already is saying no to the Bears. “The way the system is constructed, you go to the worst possible situation,” said Carl Williams, proud dad of Caleb. “The worst possible team, the worst organization in the league — because of their desire for parity — gets the first pick. So it’s the gift and the curse.”
Meaning? “He’s got two shots at the apple,” he told GQ magazine. “If there’s not a good situation, the truth is, he can come back to school.” Imagine Caleb staying at USC, where he could have bags of NIL money to go with possibly two Heismans, and blowing off the Bears.
“We’ve got to keep this thing tight in our locker room. That’s the most important thing,” Eberflus said. “There’s going to be a lot of outside noise, as there always is in the NFL. And we’ve played three games so far. We’ve got two games in 11 days, and so we’re going to focus on that.”
No one else will.
When in quarterbacking doubt, turn to Miami, where the Dolphins have scored 130 points in three games, second-most in league history in such a short span. Someone you probably don’t know, running back De’Von Achane, compiled 233 total yards and four touchdowns. The McDaniel offense amassed 726 yards, 10.2 yards per play, and scored the most points since Washington mastered the New York Giants with 72. "That's a lot of players executing a lot of things to a standard that's unrelenting,” McDaniel said. "When you have a lead — leads are vulnerable in this league. So what I saw from a lot of guys ... that's guys really taking it to heart that we have one (opportunity) with this team in 2023, and we're going to make the most of it and be unrelenting with our standards. I've said it time and time again that it's an incredibly coachable locker room and they definitely earned that win.”
Why didn’t he keep the starters in and go for the league record? Tagovailoa, who completed his first 17 passes and threw for four scores, had time for six or seven TDs. “It felt like chasing points and chasing a record, that's not what we came to the game to do," McDaniel said. “That doesn't have a bearing on the overall season outcome and I just didn't -- I saw it as 10 times out of 10 you kneel down in those situations because there was an attainable record that was cool, but the message that I thought it would send wasn't really in line with how I view things. It would've been cool, but with what we're trying to do, I think that would be talking out of both sides of my mouth. If we went and tried to send the field goal team on and squeeze an extra three, it's not really what I'm about.”
Nor is it what Tagovailoa is about. He wants to be paid, top dollar, and if it isn’t from Dolphins owner Stephen Ross — who was punished by the league for chasing Tom Brady and Payton, of all people, as free agents — it will be somewhere else. How about, say, Chicago? Nah, he doesn’t want that mess. “This doesn't compare to anything that I've seen or been a part of," he said. “It just talks about the resilience of our team. That was the result that we got.”
The league is creepy when it comes to QBs. Gardner Minshew outplayed Lamar Jackson in an Indianapolis victory in Baltimore. In Arizona, Joshua Dobbs bested Dak Prescott in a victory over Dallas. Deshaun Watson finally looked like a top-line player instead of a chaser of female masseuses. Brock Purdy could be an MVP candidate. Justin Herbert had to throw 47 times to keep the Chargers from veering to 0-3, where the Vikings rest. Jordan Love didn’t do much but win for the 2-1 Packers. The Jets won’t be going to the postseason if Aaron Rodgers is still serious about a quick return.
The two serious quarterbacks this season, in the AFC, are Tagovailoa and Mahomes. I know one who threw a three-yard touchdown pass to Kelce, whose cheers included monster screams from a glass-enclosed suite where someone was aroused. “Let’s freaking go!” said his invited guest.
“I told her that I've seen her rock a stage in Arrowhead and she might have to come see me rock the stage at Arrowhead.," Kelce said last week. “We'll see what happens in the near future.”
Said Mahomes: “I haven’t gotten to meet her. I guess if she ends up being with Travis, I’ll meet her at some point. On Friday he was like, ‘Yeah, I think she’s coming to the game this weekend,’ and went about his business. And you’re like, I guess that just happens. That’s Travis.”
Taylor Swift leaves America in early November for Argentina. By then, Kelce will be an anti-hero, waiting for a game against Miami.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.