After Sunday’s loss to the Chargers, Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa said he thinks problems with the 1-5 team “starts with the leadership” and included “guys not showing up to player-only meetings” as one of the places where that leadership was lacking.
Tagovailoa’s decision to air those feelings from the podium at a postgame press conference rather than doing so in-house was met with criticism that extended to the quarterback and captain of the team saying there was a leadership void. Head coach Mike McDaniel defended Tagovailoa on Sunday and called him “a direct communicator,” but he shared a different view during a Monday press conference.
McDaniel admitted that reporters “caught me before I heard” Tagovailoa’s full comments and, now that he has, he agrees that it wasn’t the right setting to make them.
“Regardless of intent and what was on Tua’s mind, after a loss as the franchise quarterback, that’s not the forum to displace that,” McDaniel said. “He knows that now. I honestly believe there was no ill intention, but you’re talking about a misguided representation of player-orchestrated film sessions.”
McDaniel said that Tagovailoa “has directly communicated with a lot of guys” since the Sunday comments and that he doesn’t think there will be lingering issues related to the quarterback’s choice of venue, but walking the comments back is unlikely to fix all that’s gone wrong with the Dolphins so far this season.
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