Tua's time is up. Now the hard part starts for the Dolphins

It was just two seasons ago that the Miami Dolphins hung 70 points and 726 yards on the Denver Broncos in a September win.

A franchise that hadn't won a playoff game in more than two decades finally looked promising. Quarterback Tua Tagovailoa had overcome frightening concussion problems in his young career to play a full season. Head coach Mike McDaniel, fresh off the Kyle Shanahan coaching tree, was the kind of creative young play-caller that NFL teams covet. He piloted a somewhat frenzied offense with exotic schemes that took advantage of the talents of speedsters like Tyreek Hill, Jaylen Waddle, and De'Von Achane.

The Dolphins were going places. Until they weren't.

Miami regressed last season, regressed even more this year, and finally had its slim postseason hopes extinguished by a disastrous loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Monday. The Dolphins still haven't won that playoff game.

If their present wasn't bad enough, their future looks iffy at best. McDaniel benched Tagovailoa this week, a decision that makes perfect sense on football merits: He leads the NFL in interceptions this season and is near the bottom of the league in most advanced quarterback metrics, down in the basement with Justin Fields and Geno Smith.

That's a sentence you never want to read about your quarterback, especially one who carries a cap hit of over $56 million next season.

McDaniel handed the starting job to rookie Quinn Ewers (poor Zach Wilson, leapfrogged on the depth chart by a seventh-round draft pick), but the Tua question will hang over Miami's final three games of the season.

And that question is: now what?

Do you try again with the 27-year-old who signed a $212.4-million extension in 2024 and was dubbed the franchise quarterback? Or do you start over in an offseason that doesn't offer many compelling alternatives? Do you pay Tagovailoa $56 million to hold a clipboard, or do you send him on his way in 2026 and eat an NFL-record $99.2-million dead-cap hit that would likely cripple the roster for multiple seasons?

If none of these seem like great options, that's because they aren't. The Dolphins would surely prefer to trade Tagovailoa, but it seems unlikely they'll find a dance partner considering how his play has cratered.

These questions would at least be easier to answer if Tagovailoa himself wasn't such a puzzle. His introduction to most football fans came after halftime of the college national championship game in 2018 when Nick Saban threw him in with Alabama trailing Georgia 13-0. It seemed like a wild move: Tagovailoa was a freshman who had only ever played mop-up duty. But he was brilliant, throwing for 166 yards and three touchdowns to lead the Crimson Tide to an upset victory. At that moment, Tua's stock couldn't have been higher. He had the tools, and more importantly, the moxie: The kid came through on the big stage in the toughest of moments.

A lot has happened since. Tagovailoa had a spectacular sophomore season at Alabama but suffered a hip injury as a junior that created some uncertainty about him heading into the NFL draft. Miami selected him fifth overall anyway, and his pro career's had peaks and valleys. At his best, he's been an accurate distributor of the ball - a point guard in McDaniel's chaotic offense. But concussion fears have (understandably) motivated him to get rid of the ball quickly, and coupled with his lack of arm strength, he's evolved - or devolved - into a very limited passer who's tentative and unsure of himself in the pocket. His production nosedived this season, and the guy who gave him that giant contract, Chris Grier, was fired as general manager in late October with the Dolphins at 2-7.

McDaniel engineered a little winning streak by moving to a run-heavy style, but that came crashing down against the Steelers. With the game scoreless in the first quarter, Tagovailoa heaved a deep pass that was badly underthrown and easily picked off. It was a mystifying decision: He was under no real pressure and still threw a wounded duck that was an open invitation to a cornerback.

It's possible that McDaniel watched the tape, saw that pass attempt, and decided then and there that he didn't want Tagovailoa running his offense any longer.

McDaniel, of course, might not be around to make that decision next year. Owner Stephen Ross kept McDaniel and fired Grier, but the next GM will presumably have some input on who coaches the team. Beyond the Tua question, the team also needs to figure out what to do with Hill, who missed most of this season due to injury but whose production already dropped off steeply last year.

In other words, most of the pieces of the run-and-gun Miami offense that looked so dangerous in 2023 might be gone by 2026. Once a model NFL franchise that enjoyed the stability that came with the likes of Shula and Marino and Griese and Csonka, the Dolphins have to start over. Again.

The only constant in Miami nowadays is a lack of postseason success. This will mark the Dolphins' 25th straight season without a playoff victory, and there's no obvious end to the streak in sight.

Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.