Tua Tagovailoa finished his underwhelming rookie season with five interceptions in 10 games played, with a solid 1.7 percent interception percentage. The same Tua Tagovailoa finished his minicamp practice on Tuesday with five interceptions, and though we're not sure how many attempts he had, we can reasonably assume that the interception percentage was just a tad higher. We're not going to overreact because it's just a minicamp practice, but with a statistic as eye-popping as five interceptions, it's a little too hard to ignore.
Five interceptions in a single session doesn't bode well for a young quarterback who didn't inspire much confidence in Year 1 after receiving a ton of pre-draft hype, and there's no more Ryan Fitzpatrick in town to compete with — though Jacoby Brissett was brought on to fill that role.
So what happened, exactly, to inspire such a disastrous session on Tuesday? For one, there was "monsoon-like weather" that obviously made it a little bit more difficult to lead an effective offense.
According to Wolfe, the fifth interception "bounced right off Mike Gesicki's hands" and was a catchable ball, so perhaps it should be a five-interception practice with an asterisk. But there aren't any asterisks in NFL box scores, be it due to weather or dropped passes, and it was a five-interception day all the same.
But it wasn't only the weather playing a part, apparently, as the QB himself indicated that this specific practice required him to be overly aggressive.
"That's just been the emphasis for us, coming out to this first day of minicamp, was just to be aggressive, push the ball downfield," Tagovailoa said (via Kevin Patra of NFL.com). "Obviously, you want to be smart but if there's a time to make mistakes, now's the time to make mistakes. We're just trying to see what we can fit in the hole, what we can throw within coverages and come in the film room and then learn from it."
He also didn't excuse himself for the poor showing because of the weather, adding that they're going to have to play in rough conditions in the real game, be it rain or sleet or snow.
"We're gonna have to play in the rain," he said. "We're gonna have to play in conditions where the ball is gonna be wet, where it's gonna be cold. It's gonna be hot. You gotta expect the unexpected. It was really good for our guys to go out there and compete in the rain. I thought today was, you know, overall was an all right day. There's things that we gotta fix here within the next couple hours to look over film and correct for tomorrow."
It's nice that he's not putting too much pressure on himself, especially when, again, June minicamp in horrible weather and with an overly aggressive mindset is not the place to scrutinize a quarterback's stat line. But it's also nice that he's not putting too much pressure on himself because others have that covered for him. For instance, Pro Football Focus analyst Sam Monson said that "no second-year player is under as much pressure as Tagovailoa," in part due to the competition surrounding him in that draft class:
Justin Herbert and Joe Burrow both hit the ground running last season, only making Tua look worse by comparison, as did Brian Flores' decision to repeatedly bench him for Ryan Fitzpatrick in crucial situations when the team really needed some plus play from its quarterback. Tua acknowledged that he didn’t really have a great handle on the offense, given the lack of a real preseason in 2020, and all of these factors combine to put him under huge pressure as the leader of a team that is ready to win now.
Luckily, he's got a pretty good group of weapons surrounding him in his second season, one that hopefully represents a breakout campaign for Tagovailoa.
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He also has the confidence of his head coach, Brian Flores, who wants him to continue being aggressive and labeled these practices as times to "test the waters and see what works, what doesn't work" (via Myles Simmons of Pro Football Talk).
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