NFL Trade Rumors
Dolphins QB Tua Tagovailoa made headlines following their Week 6 loss to the Chargers when saying some teammates are late to players-only meetings. When speaking to reporters, Tagovailoa admitted that he made a mistake with his comments.
“I’ve made a mistake and I’m owning up to that right now,” Tagovailoa said, via Marcel Louis-Jacques of ESPN. “I’ve talked to guys on the team about it, talked to the leaders about it, and they know my heart. They know that the intent was right. But no matter the intent … when things get misconstrued or however the media wants to portray it, that leaves a void of silence and a lot of questions for the guys on our team now being 1-5. We talk a lot about, ‘All right, we got to get this going, come in excited to go to work, forget about the noise.’ And I feel like I just added onto that for our guys. I’ve got to look at myself as the leader protecting the team. I don’t feel like I did that to the best of my abilities. I felt like I let the emotions of the game get to me after the game. And that’s something that I can learn from as a leader on this team and what happens in-house should be protected and none of that should have gotten out.”
Dolphins DT Zach Sieler still feels like players are “buying into the culture” and trying to move forward.
“There’s been stuff in the past we have absolutely fixed,” Sieler said. “We have a lot of new guys on my side of the ball … and I think we have a lot of guys that want to buy in. They’re buying into the culture, they’re trying to put their best foot forward. We aren’t making some of the plays we need to make, and the best thing we can do is be present, deliver every practice to really hone in on those plays to make it as game-like as possible so on Sunday we start making those plays.”
Tagovailoa mentioned that he’s getting a gauge on which players are taking their 1-5 start to the season as motivation to improve.
“I would say first and foremost, you get to see who a person really is as you’re going through the hardships, right?” Tagovailoa said. “You get to see, ‘OK, does this person start pointing fingers? Does this person take it upon themselves every time? How does everyone go about that?’ I think you kind of get a good gauge about the team that you have as well with that. But I would say there hasn’t been any bickering or pointing of fingers lately. There’s just guys that are putting their head down, trying to work and do the best that they can to put us in the best position to win games.”
