A promising season for the Miami Dolphins ended with a thud on a frigid Saturday night in Kansas City, in a loss head coach Mike McDaniel called “gut-wrenching.”
And it leaves the Dolphins with plenty of questions going forward after a shaky end to the regular season followed by a poor performance by the once-dominant offense and quarterback Tua Tagovailoa in the wild-card defeat to the Chiefs.
“We fell very short of our goals,” McDaniel said. “We have very strong expectations for ourselves. One of the reasons a lot of people don’t put themselves out there and hold those expectations is because when you fall short of them it’s emotional, it’s gut-wrenching.”
Tagovailoa was excellent for much of the season only to falter down the stretch, including in consecutive losses at the end of the regular season that cost Miami home-field advantage in the wild-card round and forced them to have to play in the cold of Kansas City.
He avoided the injury and concussion issues that plagued him in the past, which allowed Tagovailoa to start all 17 games and lead the NFL in passing yards with 4,624.
The QB, who will be entering the final year of his rookie contract next season, also set career highs in passing yards, touchdowns (29) and completion percentage (69.3).
But like the rest of the team, he did not finish strong. Tagovailoa threw only four touchdowns in Miami’s final three games — including Saturday’s loss — while also tossing five interceptions.
Against the Chiefs in Tagovailoa’s first playoff game, he went 20-for-39 with 199 yards.
Asked about a potential extension following the season, Tagovailoa said he’s not concerned.
“I don’t feel any pressure at all,” Tagovailoa said. “I have full trust in myself. I have full trust in what I’m capable of doing for our organization, but outside of that we’re focusing on tonight and what happened, we’re going to simmer on this and see what we can do to get better from it.”
Of his season, Tagovailoa said, “I would say there’s been a lot of ups and downs. A lot of guys that started the season out with us and then weren’t able to finish the season with us… But for our team, we never want to use any of those things as an excuse and we’re not going to use any of that as an excuse.”
McDaniel added he didn’t believe Tagovailoa was responsible for the loss.
“I know he made some good plays tonight,” McDaniel said. “I know there’s plays that he wants to have back, and there’s some calls that I made that I liked and there [were] definitely some that I want to have back. And I think that goes across the board. There [were] a lot of really good things and we’ve all learned to have high expectations for that unit, and seven points isn’t good enough. We’ll have to live with that and learn from that as we try to take another step.”