Tua to Ryan Clark: "Keep My Name Out Your Mouth"
What an ESPN analysis intended as a joke seemingly turned into fighting words for Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa.
Upon hearing that ESPN analyst Ryan Clark, a former NFL player and co-creator of "The Pivot" podcast, questioned his offseason workout and diet in an NFL Live rant about Tagovailoa’s size. Tagovailoa issued Clark a warning before telling him to “keep my name out your mouth.”
"I come from a Samoan family; respect is everything. But, you know, it does get to a point where, hey, [take it] a little easy on that, buddy, because I think we're pretty tough-minded people and if we need to get scrappy, we can get scrappy,” said Tagovailoa, who intentionally added 10 pounds of muscle in the offseason through weight training to help him survive a 17-game NFL season.
“I'm not someone to talk about myself the entire time. But it takes a lot,” Tagovailoa said. “You think I wanted to build all this muscle? Like, to some extent I wanted to. [But] I wanted to be a little lighter.
“There's a mixture of things that people don't understand, that people don't know about that are talked about that go behind the scenes.”
Tagovailoa is referring to advice he received from former NFL quarterbacks like Michael Vick, who encouraged him to gain weight to give himself a better change of surviving the brutal collisions that take place in the NFL.
ESPN criticizes Tua's weight gains
However, during a ESPN segment that broke down Tagovailoa’s performance in Miami’s 28-3 preseason win over the Houston Texans, Clark accused Tagovailoa of not working out this offseason and speculated he wasn’t following the team nutritionist’s recommendations.
“Let me tell you what he wasn’t doing: He wasn’t in the gym, I’ll bet you that,” Clark said on NFL Live's Monday show. “He was not at the dinner table eating what the nutritionist had advised. He looks ‘happy.’ He is thick. He’s built like the girls working at Onyx right now.”
Onyx is a reference to a popular urban strip club in Atlanta and Houston, which is infamous for having thick strippers.
Problem is, Tagovailoa was intentional about his strength gains, and building a better frame, a stronger neck and core because the goal for 2023 is for the NFL’s top-rated passer from 2022 to be larger and able to survive the brutal hits that forced him to miss five games last season because of concussions.
Strength gains were Tua's goal
“Strength work has been really big throughout this offseason for me with getting my legs under me, kind of building my upper body, building around my neck, my core,” Tagovailoa said earlier this summer. “All of that has been taken into consideration. And I’ve been doing a lot more to try to help myself sustain the season.”
He also studied jiu-jitsu this offseason to learn how to fall better, and plans to continue taking classes once a week because it is supposed to help him shield his body from contact.
Tagovailoa, who owns a 21-13 win-loss record as a starter, said his whole offseason was built around doing whatever is necessary to stay healthy for an entire season, which is what he needs to silence the criticisms about his lack of durability.
