Friday Dolphins Mailbag: Joint Practices, Tua Topics, and More

Tackling various issues on the minds of Miami Dolphins fans, from another angle on the Tua arm strength topic to impressions of head coach Mike McDaniel

Part 1 of this week's SI Fan Nation All Dolphins mailbag:

From Chris Hyer, Ed.D. (@Chrishyer31):

Having now spent some time with McDaniel, what is your impression of him, and how do you compare him to other first year head coaches?

Hey Chris, my impression of him is pretty much what you’ve been able to see from video clips in that he’s obviously very bright, very meticulous in how he explains things and clearly has an ability to relate to players. He’s certainly a pretty big contrast from Brian Flores in terms of personality, but there certainly are similarities to when Adam Gase first arrived with his reputation as an offensive genius and his friendly demeanor.

From Phinaholic (@dana_buice):

Hey my friend, Game 1 is on my mind. Looking at the Pats, I see a linebacking corps that lost a lot of veteran players and leadership. They lost Hightower and Van Noy; who did they replace them with and are these players now on the Pats an upgrade or a downgrade?

Hey Dana, word is the Patriots still are holding the door open for a return by Hightower if he wants to keep playing in New England, and the one newcomer at linebacker is Mack Wilson, who they got from Cleveland in a trade for Chase Winovich. The idea was for the Patriots to get faster at linebacker at the cost of losing veteran players like Van Noy and possibly Hightower. At this point, though, it’s hard to look at the Patriots and suggest they’re better at linebacker than they were in 2021.

From Scott Eckenrode (@snake21104):

I know we've done the Tua arm strength thing to death, but I want to attack it from a different angle. Based on what you've seen at OTAs this year, if you hadn't already heard his arm strength was an issue, and had never seen him before, would you think it was an issue?

Hey Scott, that is a very good approach to the question. From where I sit, I do think you would be able to tell pretty quickly watching a practice that, yes, arm strength could be an issue with Tua. And, as I’ve mentioned before, I don’t care about 55-yard passes in practices either on the money or underthrown. It’s just obvious, at least to me, that there’s a certain zip that QB have on their throws, and it’s not there with Tua — or Teddy Bridgewater, for that matter.

From jorge Boyd (@raga1922):

Hi Alain, do you like the idea of the Dolphins practicing against another team during training camp? What benefits do you see from that, and are there any negatives from doing so?

Hey Jorge, I’m a big fan of joint practices from start to finish. The benefits are twofold in that it gives the offense and defense different players and schemes (as much as they’re developed by that point) against which to practice. It also breaks up the monotony for the players against practicing against teammates and ramps up the tempo because there’s ego involved in wanting to beat the other team at practice (more so than beating your teammates).

From CanesForLife (@JodyTipps):

Alain, have you ever thought of doing a comparison of Tua to other historically Top 5 drafted QBs' first two years in the league? Just to get an idea of how he's doing from a historical standpoint.

Hey Jody, yeah, that could be something I attack at some point, but to me those comparisons are useless if you start looking at different eras because the game is completely different and it’s a lot easier to put up high passer ratings now than it used to be. So this needs to be an apples-to-apples comparison, with also an understanding that stats don’t tell the whole story.