This is a blow of near insurmountable proportions for Miami. The Miami Dolphins are going to have to rely on rookie QB Skylar Thompson to upset the Bills in Buffalo to see them into the Divisional Round as Tua Tagovailoa has officially been ruled out of the game due to his concussion.
There’s no easy way to put this for Dolphins fans: your team’s chances of winning this game and reaching the Divisional Round for the first time in 23 years went from a fighter’s chance to it’s almost a formality they are going to loss.
Now, I have nothing against Skylar Thompson or the Dolphins roster as a whole but seeing how the team beat an already-eliminated Jets side 9-6 on a last second field goal a week ago with Thompson as QB, I don’t think they’ll be able to overcome a hyper-energized, all-powerful Bills roster. In fact, I think I may have been a little generous in saying that it’s almost a formality as the Miami Dolphins with Tua and without Tua are two polar opposite teams.
Truthfully, the difference between having Tua and not having Tua in the lineup is the Dolphins being a sneaky AFC Championship contender versus a team that struggles to win 3 games all season. Am I being harsh? Maybe, but what the Dolphins showed in the time when Tua was and was not healthy was that they are a poor football team.
When Tua was “healthy” (relatively speaking) and played all 60 minutes of a game, the Dolphins went 8-3 and were one of the best teams in all of football. When he was unhealthy and languishing on the sidelines with his many concussions, the Dolphins went 1-5. That’s a massive difference.
The only games where you can really say that the Dolphins laid an egg with a healthy Tua in the lineup was the 33-17 49ers loss (who hasn’t loss to San Francisco?) and the 23-17 Chargers loss, while the 26-20 loss to the Packers is in my opinion down to the concussion he suffered early on in that game.
Nevertheless, I think it is clear to see that with the Dolphins offense so reliant on a competent QB dishing out passes to Tyreek Hill, Jaylen Waddle, Mike Gesiki, Cedrik Wilson, etc. to get yards and points, it will be an almost impossible task for Skylar Thompson (Season Stats: 534 yards, 1 TD, 3 INTs, 57% completion percentage) to light up the Bills secondary.
As for Tua Tagovailoa’s future, this news should be really concerning to both Dolphins fans and the player himself.
Not only is this Tua’s third concussion in nearly as many months, but he has now been out for two weeks and is still not able to be cleared by medical staff to play. I don’t want to be speculative or gloomy, but it sure seems like Tua is going to have to make a choice about whether his playing career is more important to him than his long-term health.
Suffering so many concussions in such a short period of time is bound to have an untold effect on his brain, which is something nobody wants to see happen.
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