Miami Dolphins Media Conference

Saturday, August 27, 2022

Miami, Florida, USA

Tua Tagovailoa

Postgame Presser


Miami Dolphins 48, Philadelphia Eagles 10.

TUA TAGOVAILOA: First and foremost, I would like to send my condolences to Jason Jenkins and his family. I think what made this so hard is it was unexpected. He was extremely close to a lot of us on the team. From when I got here, I was extremely close to him. I grew close to him waiting for Ann and just being able to talk stories with him before my media.

I couldn't imagine what his family is going through right now and waking up not thinking that this was going to be his last day here. I want to send my condolences to his family. I think through our team win I'm glad we got to do that for him.

Q. What stands out to you about the kind of man Jason was and what he represented to this organization?

TUA TAGOVAILOA: I would say that Jason was a beacon of the community. That's what I think of when I hear of Jason's name.

This guy is always wanting to do stuff for other people. Hey, how can I help you with this? How can we help with your foundation? Hey, how can we do this to make that better, or do you want to come do this community service event? Things like that. That's what I think of.

Q. You found out after the game?

TUA TAGOVAILOA: Just found out after the game, yeah.

Q. What has it been like in the locker room when McDaniel gave you the news? It must have been hard.

TUA TAGOVAILOA: It was emotional for a lot of guys and a lot of guys that have been here for quite some time that got to know him.

We won the game. We expected Mike to be the very optimistic guy after the game giving out game balls, and that wasn't the case. Mike got a little emotional in there. There were some other guys who were able to talk that also got emotional, and he broke the news.

It's tough. Anything having to do with a life of someone who had great relationships with people in the organization, it's hard.

Q. Can you tell us about the first play, hitting Tyreek Hill deep, and what that meant to be able to connect with him the first time on the field with him?

TUA TAGOVAILOA: It was good. We had to decide with plays what openers we wanted to go with. So knowing that Tyreek was playing, he wanted to go ball. We gave him a shot.

The throw wasn't to my liking. That whole schpiel, if it was a better ball, if it was probably more in front of Tyreek, you know, he we could have scored on the first play probably.

You know, I think it's a credit to the practices that we've had with the Eagles and how hard our guys have been working. Not just this week, but all training camp and OTAs. It's good that people can see the hard work that we've all been putting in together.

Q. What do you think overall of the scoring drives there that you had?

TUA TAGOVAILOA: I thought they were good. Obviously, there's always going to be things to get better at, but I credit all our success to our O-line. They worked their butts off extremely hard throughout OTAs and then coming into training camp. They've worked extremely hard to get defenders to read keys and make everything look the same basically.

None of that would have been possible within the run game and then the play pass game without our O-line.

Q. When a coach wins a toss -- or a team wins a toss and you like to receive and the first thing the coach tells you is to throw it deep, I mean, what's that like as a quarterback? What kind of feelings does that bring to you?

TUA TAGOVAILOA: I would say when we were given the play, Mike didn't necessarily tell me who to go to with the ball, but for me it was one of those deals that if we got a specific coverage from their defense, that regardless of who was on Tyreek or not, we wanted to take that shot. And so we got the premiere look of what the play consisted of, and that's why we took the shot.

Q. Mike said before the game that he knew what was going on with Jason. Could you tell a difference with him on the sideline at all?

TUA TAGOVAILOA: Couldn't tell a difference with Mike on the sideline at all. Couldn't tell. He hid it pretty well.

No one on our team had any idea or any clue that any of that had happened. It's a sad day for us here, the Miami Dolphins and our organization. We lost someone really, really good.

Thanks, guys.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
124150-1-1878 2022-08-28 03:14:00 GMT

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