Mike McDaniel isn’t reading much into the stir Tyreek Hill is causing around Tua Tagovailoa.
Hill has on multiple occasions this offseason raved about Tagovailoa's accuracy, most recently declaring him the most accurate quarterback in the NFL. There’s not a single established metric to back up that claim, and it was an especially bizarre comment considering Hill just spent years playing with one of the most talented quarterbacks the league has ever seen in Patrick Mahomes.
But it’s certainly better that he’s gassing up his quarterback instead of putting him down. That’s the approach new Fins head coach Mike McDaniel outlined during an exclusive interview with 560 Sports’ “The Jose Rose Show”.
“I think you have a choice in how you receive information as a person, and I talk to players a lot about that,” McDaniel said. “So I think with Tua, and with myself and with Tyreek, what I hear is ‘Hey everyone, my name is Tyreek Hill and I’m confident in my quarterback,’ and I think that’s a good thing for Tua to hear.
“Tua right now is just worried about being his best self. It’s very encouraging, it’s very rewarding from a coach’s perspective to watch him grow with his teammates and for a guy that they’ve only had a limited amount of a work relationship together, that they really started to bond. I think it’s really kind of cool from Tyreek’s perspective."
One of the bigger criticisms of Hill’s comments is that Tagovailoa already has a ton of pressure on him. Thus far he has not played well enough to cement himself as Miami’s quarterback of the future, and this season will go a long way in charting the course for the rest of his NFL career. Hill making those comments might only be adding to the pressure.
McDaniel’s response: That’s nothing new.
“There’s always pressure to be good. In the NFL … someone is coming to take your job. That’s the nature of anything successful,” McDaniel said. “I think the Denver Broncos got sold for $4.8 billion, there’s a lot of money in the business. So, you’re probably going to have competition for your job.
“Every single one of us, myself included, you have to recognize in the NFL that it is a privilege and if there’s somebody better to do what you’re doing, they’re coming, whether it’s this year or the next. You just max out yourself, you don’t worry about all that stuff, you try to be the best player you can be.”
The Dolphins are surrounding Tagovailoa with a decent collection of weapons, presumably to signal that this is sink or swim time.
Hill, emphatically, seems to believe he will swim. McDaniel clearly has no issue with that conviction.
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