Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa passes during an NFL game against the Green Bay Packers on Nov. 28, 2024, at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wis.(AP Photo/Matt Ludtke)
During the 2024 NFL season, Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa completed 72.9 percent of his passes, the third-best single-season completion rate in NFL history. That performance came a year after the former Alabama All-American led the NFL with 4,624 passing yards.
What can Dolphins fans expect from Tagovailoa in 2025? An improved quarterback, according to Miami coach Mike McDaniel.
“He’s always getting better,” McDaniel said of Tagovailoa during an appearance on ESPN’s “This Is Football.” “He’s always improving on things in his game. That’s one thing that I think is supremely important, specifically at the quarterback position, but something that I think people don’t really recognize.
“All the best players in all of our sports that we all loved or grown up loving, the common denominator is there’s players with talent that continue to attack and master the position. It takes time. And I think his strength will be what he’ll lean on as his career continues, that he’s going to be a better version of what the world last saw.”
But will the Dolphins also be improved in 2025?
A playoff team in 2022 and 2023 (equaling Miami’s postseason appearances in the previous 20 seasons combined), the Dolphins stumbled to an 8-9 record in 2024. Much of the blame for that regression has been placed on Tagovailoa’s health.
Tagovailoa sustained a concussion during the second game of the season and spent the next four games on injured reserve. Then he missed the final two games because of a hip injury.
In 2023, Miami finished second in points and first in yards among the NFL’s 32 teams. In 2024, the Dolphins ranked 22nd in points and 18th in yards.
“I think that 2025 Dolphins will flourish on the lessons learned in part of the 2024 Dolphins,” McDaniel said. “I think football is very analogous to life, and it’s always humbling — the National Football League, specifically. And it’s what you choose to do within that humility that really is your actual story. So I think our team has found over the course of the three years, each team is different. Each team has lessons that the next team can learn from.
“I think the core fabric of our football team is hungry in the right way, motivated for the right reasons, tooled with the right coaching. And I think we’re completing the offseason, from a player-acquisition standpoint, we’re positioning ourselves to do what needs to be done to be good. And I think everything beyond that is something that I think this team won’t focus on because we’ve been blessed with people having a lot of things in their minds that aren’t belief in the football team and that’s a present that we all can accept and choose to utilize if we want.”
Tagovailoa joined the Dolphins as the fifth pick in the 2020 NFL Draft after he won the Maxwell Award and the Walter Camp Award at Alabama as college football’s best player for the 2018 season.
After five seasons, Tagovailoa ranks second in completion percentage and ninth in passing-efficiency rating in NFL history.
In each of the past three seasons, Tagovailoa has had a passing-efficency rating of at least 101. In 2025, he could become the fifth quarterback to reach 101 for four consecutive seasons. Aaron Rodgers, from 2009 through 2014, and Drew Brees, from 2015 through 2020, topped 101 for six consecutive seasons, and Steve Young, from 1991 through 1994, and Russell Wilson, from 2018 through 2021, reached 101 for four consecutive seasons.
