It\u2019s not often that a coach is happy to see his quarterback throw interceptions. But Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said after Sunday\u2019s game that he was happy with both of the interceptions thrown by Tua Tagovailoa.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s because both of them were deep balls on third-and-long that served as arm punts: Interceptions that were better for the offense than throwing an incompletion and then punting on fourth down.<\/p>\n
Tagovailoa\u2019s first interception came on third-and-11. The pass was picked off 41 yards downfield, and the Bills didn\u2019t gain any yardage on the return. So it was the same as an incompletion followed by a punt with a net of 41 yards.<\/p>\n
Tagovailoa\u2019s second interception came on third-and-9. The pass was picked off 43 yards downfield, and the Bills actually lost 11 yards from there thanks to a penalty on the return. So it was the same as an incompletion followed by a punt with a net of 54 yards.<\/p>\n
Effectively, Tagovailoa\u2019s two interceptions were two arm punts with a net average of 47.5 yards. Across the NFL, the average punt nets 40.9 yards. So Tagovailoa\u2019s interceptions were both actually better than an average punt.<\/p>\n
McDaniel explained after the game why he liked seeing that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was actually really pumped. I told Tua on some third down calls to let it rip down the field and operate it as an opportunity ball to act as a punt,\u201d McDaniel said.<\/p>\n
Both interceptions did act as punts, pinning the Bills in their own territory on a day when the Dolphins controlled the game and pulled off a big upset.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s not often that a coach is happy to see his quarterback throw interceptions. But Dolphins coach Mike…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283111,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-283110","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-nfl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}