Whenever Tua Tagovailoa is mentioned, his supporters and detractors tend to get emotional and let their emotions cloud their judgment and rational thought. Try to look at this topic without emotion and listen to what is being said.

The Miami Dolphins are alive and fighting for a playoff spot entering Week 18 of the NFL Season. Very few people, fans and media alike, thought this was possible when the team started the season 2-6.

But here we are.

With that said, the Dolphins’ final playoff push is taking place without its superstar quarterback and highest-paid player, Tua Tagovailoa.

This isn’t uncommon for the Dolphins, though as Tua performing badly or not playing at all late in the season seems to be the norm now.

In 2020, in a key late-December game, Tua was benched against the Raiders for poor play, and the team needed Ryan Fitzpatrick to come off the bench to win the game.

In 2022, in the final two regular season games of the season, Tua missed with a concussion, and then he was unavailable for the playoff game in Buffalo.

In 2024, Tua missed a key game against Cleveland in Week 17 and is unlikely to play against the Jets this week. Now, his 2024 season may now be over due to his most recent hip injury.

What is so frustrating for Dolphins fans this time is that the injury appeared to come out of nowhere. Just last Thursday, Tua was at the podium talking to the media, downplaying the injury and saying it was nothing serious. Mike McDaniel gave no indication that Tua’s injury was serious and may not play.

I guess they felt the need to hide the injury to get a “competitive advantage” over the lowly Cleveland Browns.

Regardless, since the win over Cleveland with Tyler Huntley under center, McDaniel has had to speak a few times and has given more insight on the injury.

McDaniel, after the game on Sunday, said: “Surgery is not currently on the table. I mean, aren’t you talking about next year? It’s hard to forecast next year. C’mon – calendar joke? Like I said, we had reasonable, hopeful expectations for his body, and he absolutely had the same expectations. So, to even begin to forecast this next week is difficult because we were waiting until the last hour. Ultimately, he is super important to our team. It was not ideal in any way, shape, or form to have a game like this and not have him available, but it was also, from a medical perspective, not an option for him to play. We’ll be hopeful for that as we progress. I can’t even lean one way or the other really. We’ll see what the world has in store for us.”

Surgery?

The first words out of McDaniel’s mouth when asked about Tua was to mention surgery?

If surgery isn’t on the table, that tells you it was considered and ruled out if you read between the lines.

On Monday, McDaniel was again asked by the media who is making the final call on whether Tua plays or not. McDaniel said: “Well, I think with injuries it’s pretty cut and dry – 100 times out of 100, if someone’s not medically cleared to play, I don’t trump card that. I suppose, on game day, I guess by the letter of the law you could say it’s my final say. My final say is to choose to listen to the medical professionals with their expertise and knowing the pros and cons and that’s the only thing responsible to do with players. And then realistically, those conversations, Chris (Grier) and I get debriefed and sometimes more than other times depending on the injury in question, but that with our medical team and the doctors that are experts in the field, but to play for the Miami Dolphins, you have to have medical clearance to do so and when doctors tell you that a player is not safe to play football, we don’t ever deviate off of that. That would be extremely irresponsible on my part.”

For those fans who still don’t want to believe Tua is truly hurt and he “may come back and play this week vs. the Jets or if alive next week in the playoffs,” McDaniel gave more insight, stating on Saturday things looked bleak for Tua, and on Sunday, there was no chance he could play.

McDaniel said: “You get updates all week and you’re trying to figure out what it’s going to look like. Saturday, it looked bleak, but officially with zero ambiguity on Sunday morning, we knew. But that was based upon Saturday information that, ‘all right, it’s going to have to really take a turn,’ and when we saw it didn’t, it didn’t.”

McDaniel went on to say that Tyler Huntley will get the majority of the reps this week in practice, which is code for us getting him ready to be the starter vs. the Jets.

McDaniel also said that the risk of Tua playing with this injury is he would be put at risk of a “significant injury.”

And we should expect that is going to heal in a week or two? Please don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.

I was born at night, but not last night.

When you start to put the pieces of this puzzle together, what we see is that the Dolphins are really shutting Tua down for the season because of this hip injury.

Folks, the Dolphins are all but saying without saying Tua is hurt really bad and not close to being healthy enough or medically cleared to play. This seems like an injury that may take weeks or months or maybe even surgery to fix.

Realistically, Miami only has one game left because the odds of Denver losing to Kansas City’s backups are slim and none, so there is no need to make a bold move like putting Tua on IR to end his season. They can just have him be inactive and call up Skylar Thompson as the backup.

But even if Miami catches every break and does get into the playoffs and has to travel to Buffalo in a week to face the Bills, from all indications, Tua will not play in that game.

McDaniel is throwing out the word surgery, talking about how his mobility is limited and that they don’t want him to be a sitting duck behind the offensive line (which is laughable considering he has been a sitting duck behind the offensive line since the day he was drafted), and how Huntley is taking the majority of the reps in practice.

You don’t need to be Scooby Doo to solve this mystery, and that is Miami has shut down Tua for the rest of the 2024 season. Without actually publically saying he has been shut down for the rest of the 2024 season.