Tua Tagovailoa had a bad practice on Tuesday, throwing five interceptions in a session notable for its wet and rainy conditions.
Tagovailoa said the picks were a byproduct of him trying to be aggressive. Wednesday morning, head coach Brian Flores said he’s encouraging the quarterback to keep that mindset.
“I don’t think Tua’s going to go into a shell,” Flores said, via Adam Beasley of the Miami Herald. “I tell him [after a practice like that] to continue being aggressive. The conversations are a lot of what we’ve already talked about here — use this time to practice pushing the ball downfield. Then we’ll make the adjustments and the corrections.”
Flores added that practice is a time to “test the waters and see what works, what doesn’t work.”
The head coach compared Tagovailoa attempting those throws to a kicker attempting a 60-yard field goal — there’s no way to know it will or won’t work until you try it.
But at the same time, Flores added, “At the end of the day, you never want turnovers anywhere. … We need to limit those.”
One of the most prominent criticisms of Tagoviailoa last season was that he failed to push the ball downfield as a rookie. If there’s ever a time to try things out to see if they work, it’s during practice in June when there’s plenty of time to make those corrections. But whenever a quarterback throws five picks in one day, it’s going to raise eyebrows.