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.