MIAMI GARDENS — Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa already entered training camp this year with his new tattoo sleeve he had done in the offseason.
After his first week off in the 2023 regular season, he changed up his hair style.
Tagovailoa walked into his Wednesday media session, after he was seen at practice earlier wearing a wave cap and then putting his helmet over it, with his hair braided. He had a new cornrow look.
“Got them done last week, so it’s been in for a week and a couple of days,” Tagovailoa said after he had the idle weekend before his Dolphins host the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday.
“It was my call. My hair was outrageous, so I thought if I didn’t braid it or if it wasn’t long enough, that I’d just cut it, so rather just get it braided.”
So far, Tagovailoa has received rave reviews.
“They love it. My teammates love it,” he said.
That was confirmed in the locker room.
“I love it,” outside linebacker Bradley Chubb said. “He told me he was going to do it, but I didn’t believe him. Then he came in the next day with the cornrows.
“The ‘Uce’ is loose,” Chubb added, referencing a Samoan slang term for “brother” that has often been a nickname for Tagovailoa.
Said linebacker Jerome Baker: “He’s just been saying these past few weeks, ‘I’m going to grow out my hair. I’m going to grow out my hair.’ One day, he just came in with a durag (on). If you come in with a durag, you kind of already know you’ve got some braids under there. It was definitely cool to see that.”
Tagovailoa said it’s not some new level of self-expression he’s finding with the cornrows and tattoo sleeve in such close proximity to one another, only revealed fewer than four months apart.
“Just trying them out,” he said. “Obviously, not my tattoo, because that’s permanent. But just trying to see what this is with my hair. That’s it.”
The Dolphins quarterback was asked if there was any Allen Iverson inspiration, and he was told social media commenters were saying he looked like rapper Drake.
“No A.I. inspiration. Dude’s a baller. Got a lot of respect for him,” Tagovailoa said. “It was just one of those things where my hair was wild. I wanted to see what I could do with it. If I couldn’t do anything, I was going to chop it off.
“But Drake? Ah, I don’t know if I look like Drake.”
Then, Tagovailoa busted out a snippet of him reciting the lyrics to Drake’s “In My Feelings.”
“Kiki …” he sang as he broke into a quick dance.
“The wifey likes it. She loves it,” he added.
Besides getting his hair braided, the wife and the family is where Tagovailoa’s focus was on the bye week.
“Got to work out,” he said, “spend some time with my family, spend some time with (my son) Ace. That’s really all it was. We got to go to church. That was really good.”
Now, Miami’s quarterback who is in the race for MVP with his team 6-3 has his eyes set on preparing the Dolphins for the final eight-game push before the playoffs.
Tagovailoa had the perfect response when he was asked if the league MVP is on his mind.
“Brother, I just want to help our team win the Super Bowl,” he said. “I think that would be the greatest deal. When everything is said and done, no one can take that away from you.”
One thing that will be critical for him and the offense is to assure they handle pressure well. In the Dolphins’ three losses, Tagovailoa has been sacked three or more times, more than in any of the wins. Against the Bills and Eagles, they took him down four times each, with Buffalo getting nine hits on Tagovailoa, a season high against him.
“Yeah, understanding who our hot guy is,” Tagovailoa said of countering pressure in coach Mike McDaniel’s offense that’s so big on timing.
“We have many plays where a lot of what we do, our timing beats the pressure. When it is a look where we don’t have time to re-ID or flip the protection, we have to be on our P’s and Q’s and understanding what you have to run and the timing of the play.”
Tagovailoa is getting the ball out, on average, 2.1 seconds after the snap, which is among the quickest releases in the NFL this season.
