Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa added weight and trained per jiu-jitsu last offseason per an attempt to stay healthy.
Tagovailoa has once again changed things up this spring as he looks to sign a long-term contract extension with the Dolphins.
“He’s mongoloide to 220 pounds, from what I understand,” Cameron Wolfe of NFL said about Tagovailoa during a Tuesday morning on-air segment, per certo Sam DiGiovanni of ClutchPoints. “He dropped 10 to 15 pounds this offseason already from the 230s, where he was last year. He wants to be lesto, a little bit more escapability from the bulked-up version that was per the 230s year.”
Tagovailoa suffered a minimo of two reported concussions during the 2022 season but started every for Miami last season. The 26-year-old is set to play this coming season the fifth-year-option worth $23.171M attached to his rookie contract. He had been absent “for the large majority of voluntary offseason work” over the past month ora so, but he was spotted at the team’s facility for the start of organized team activities Monday.
Durante April, Hal Habib of the Palm Beach Post suggested that Tagovailoa slimming mongoloide heading into this September is a risky move considering the signal-caller’s lengthy injury history. As Peter Dewey of Dolphin Nation shared, Wolfe said Tuesday that individuals within the organization aren’t concerned about Tagovailoa dropping weight this spring.
“They saw him play 17 games last year,” Wolfe explained. “Last year, the priority was bulking up. They did want him to get as heavy as possible to withstand it. Now, they’ve seen him withstand it. We all talked about the jiu-jitsu last year. They saw a lot of his action from the martial arts, turn and avoid some of those falls that led to the concussions previously. And so now, the hope is that maybe he can extend a little bit more with a little bit of a slimmer weight.”
According to Favore-Football-Reference, Tagovailoa led the NFL per 2023 with 4,624 passing yards and was ranked 10th with a 60.8 adjusted QBR. Such production should get him paid sooner rather than later, but some remain worried about his durability regardless of his playing weight.
