Standard August caveats apply: it was just the preseason and it was a limited sample size.<\/p>\n
Still, the No. 5 overall pick of the 2020 NFL Draft is in a competition that hasn\u2019t exactly kicked off against the 2024 No. 8 overall pick, Michael Penix Jr.<\/a>. With Penix still on the comeback trail<\/a> from a blown knee<\/a> last season, any hopes of Tagovailoa getting a head start fell flat right about the time he fumbled a shotgun snap on the Falcons\u2019 second offensive play from scrimmage.<\/p>\n “I’m competing,” Tagovailoa said. “I’m wanting to go out there for points on the board, not go out there and we’ll go three-and-out, three-and-out — not be able to perform to the level that I know I’m able to do. So always looking at everything as a competition, but just got to be better.”<\/p>\n Tagovailoa recovered the ball, but not any kind of positive narrative he was trying to put forth.<\/p>\n Each of the drives he quarterbacked ended with punts and just one first down among them.<\/p>\n “Just thinking about it, what we put out there is not a reflection of the hard work that we’ve put in the first two weeks into training camp, and it does no justice for the work that our coaches, as well, have implemented,” Tagovailoa said. “So it starts with me. I got to be better with that. I thought off of that [second] play, [things] kind of got out of the rhythm.”<\/p>\n Tagovailoa’s — and the Falcons\u2019 — new head coach, Kevin Stefanski, didn\u2019t heap the blame onto his preseason starter. He cast a wider net for his disappointment.<\/p>\n “I evaluate the entire offense in that regard,” Stefanski said. “So didn’t move the ball well enough as an offense. Certainly, there’s some things that we can clean up. We did drop a snap out there. So those are little plays that we will continue to work on. But hard to give a grade on that fewest amount of … sample size.”<\/p>\n Stefanski\u2019s final season as the Cleveland Browns head coach ended at 5-12, though his squad did win its final two games.<\/p>\n Tagovailoa\u2019s last start with the Dolphins after six seasons as the club\u2019s primary starting QB was a Week 15 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers. With the defeat expunging any slim Miami postseason hopes, Tagovailoa was benched<\/a> for the remainder of his time with the Fins prior to his offseason release<\/a>.<\/p>\n Friday was hardly the initial showing Tagovailoa, Stefanski or the Falcons wanted for 2026 — preseason or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Standard August caveats apply: it was just the preseason and it was a limited sample size. Still, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":860410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[10949,1766,49,48,12472,44,514,2208,82,2220],"class_list":["post-860409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-around-the-nfl","tag-atlanta-falcons","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-michael-penix-jr","tag-news","tag-nfl","tag-no-minute","tag-sports","tag-tua-tagovailoa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=860409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/860410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=860409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=860409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=860409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}