Tua Tagovailoa cancelling an interview with Mike Florio and Chris Simms apparently wasn’t a decision driven by the quarterback himself.
The PFT Live co-hosts have been some of the more outspoken critics of the Dolphins quarterback, and thus have become personae non gratae in Miami. But Tagovailoa was scheduled to appear on the show on Radio Row last Friday, only to cancel at the last minute. It was red meat for Dolphins fans who thought it was the quarterback’s way of sticking it to his detractors.
Though Tagovailoa wasn’t mentioned by name, Florio in particular ripped how the situation was handled. Given that they had been promoting Tagovailoa’s appearance, it didn’t take a genius to realize who Florio was talking about.
In his weekly appearance on “The Joe Rose Show,” Florio said Tagovailoa wasn’t the one who pulled the plug.
“Well, it had nothing to do with Tua. He did not turn us down, he did not fail to show up. It's a bigger story, it’s a broader story, and it’s something I’m trying to work through behind the scenes,” Florio said. “It has more to do with the agency that represents him now than it does him. I’ll just leave it at that. But it wasn’t like he said ‘Oh I see these two buttholes, I’m not going to be on their show.’
“We were locked in, it was set, it was good to go, but apparently someone from his agency became aware that he was going to be on. And it has more to do with one of the specific agents and something that was said about one of the agents at one point that apparently has become an issue. And that’s something I’m trying to work through. I prefer to work through it behind the scenes, but I also want to be transparent about what happened.
“This wasn’t Tua – and if he hadn’t changed agents from Leigh Steinberg to the firm he’s currently with, he would have been on. This is more about agent retaliation for something that was said about him on one of our shows. And I’m not saying he’s wrong to be upset, but I’m trying to work it out behind the scenes, and hopefully I’ll be able to.”
Florio said that Justin Fields and C.J. Stroud, who are represented by the same agency, Athletes First, also didn’t appear on PFT.
However, it was the timing of the Tagovailoa cancellation that seemed to incense Florio more than anything else.
“The problem is with Tua, nobody bothered to tell us he was out until five minutes before he was due to be on. That’s what pissed me off, frankly. If you’re going to pull the plug on this guy, then you better do it at a reasonable time so we’re not caught in a position where you’ve got the haters online thinking that Tua was retaliating against us in some way.
"Because god forbid every word out of our mouths over the past three years hasn’t been complete and total unequivocal praise of Tua Tagovailoa. We’ve actually been candid in our assessments of areas where his game needs to improve, and also our concern for the repeated concussions and what impact it may have on him over the course of his career and life when he’s done playing football.”
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