It's been just a little over a month since Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa suffered the third concussion of his rather young NFL career, but head coach Mike McDaniel is confident his signal caller will play again this season.
"I do expect to see him playing football in 2024," McDaniel told reporters Monday. "But where that is, exactly — we'll let the process continue, since we still have time before he even can entertain anything. We'll make sure that he's diligent this week and assess after that."
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Tagovailoa, 26, has a history of concussions since entering the league in 2020 and has spent the last four weeks on injured reserve with yet another one suffered in his team's Sept. 12 matchup against the Buffalo Bills.
While Tagovailoa isn't eligible to return until the Dolphins' Oct. 27 matchup against the Arizona Cardinals, the latest concussion has left many wondering whether he'd ever take the field again — something McDaniel says he hasn't contemplated.
"It was so fast from him getting hurt to immediately going into 'alright, what's the best thing for you Tua, where are you at,' and allowing the process to, you know, to really not get ahead of it," McDaniel said. "So I didn't really allow myself any sort of contemplation moments on whether he would or wouldn't [return]. I was so concerned with where he was at and in his career, for his family."
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In 2022, the Dolphins effectively put an end to Tagovailoa's season after suffering multiple concussions. And while that doesn't appear to be the team's approach this time around, McDaniel reiterated that Tagovailoa's health is the main priority moving forward.
"It is exciting that I do believe he'll play football this year," he added. "I never went down that rabbit hole of if he would or wouldn't [return], just because I've learned through circumstance how that's the wrong question to be asking. The right questions are completely, 100% toward the human being and the player, as a result."
