Tua Tagovailoa had a disappointing rookie campaign, but a former NFL quarterback believes the Dolphins quarterback’s ceiling is still high.
Ridiculously high, actually.
David Carr knows all about being a top-five draft pick and not living up to expectations. The Texans bet on him being the player to transform their franchise roughly two decades ago, selecting him with the first overall pick in the 2002 draft, and it backfired in a big way. The team cut Carr after the 2006 season, after he had been sacked 249 times in five years playing behind an abysmal Houston offensive line.
Carr served as a backup for the remainder of his NFL tenure, and he’s actually done better as an analyst than a quarterback at the professional level. Breaking down tape for NFL Network is what he currently does, and he did exactly that to evaluate Tagovailoa. Carr apparently still sees a bright future for Tagovailoa, and even compared him to Steve Young.
“…when you look at the film, you see similarities, and you see why people get excited and why the Miami Dolphins are excited,” Carr said, as transcribed by Dolphins Wire. “He looks like Steve Young. I mean, that’s the guy he is going to turn into. It’s just going to take a little time.”
“You’ve got boot action, you move him out of the pocket, he sees everything very well. He gets through his first two progressions. He has the over-route right in front of him, makes a nice throw over four or five defenders, keeps it low to protect his football player. And again, it looks just like Steve Young. He’s the same type of player.”
Tagovailoa may offer the mobility that made Young great, but he’s very slow in his decision making, and looks tentative both inside and outside the pocket. Young was quite the opposite, so Tua has a lot of work to do to even be mentioned in the same conversation as the Hall of Fame quarterback, who won three Super Bowl rings during the course of his career.
