Practice interceptions were thrown but Tua, Dolphins’ offense feel things are coming together

HOUSTON — Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa is used to being challenged by the media.

After Wednesday’s joint practice with the Texans in Houston, he flipped it on reporters present for his interview. He challenged them.

“I can give you guys a play and then if you guys want to repeat it after me as if you guys are in the huddle, you guys can,” he said.

The play call comes in, with Tagovailoa in the role of coach Mike McDaniel, emitting it to the media members who are now the quarterback.

“All right, we got north right clamp south fox H top pass 38 top Gumby XP sweat.”

What ensued was an array of gibberish from reporters — and that’s that no one in the media scrum could comprehend what the hodgepodge of random words, letters and numbers translated to in terms of a football play, let alone recite it back.

“Sounds like a pre-snap penalty to me,” Tagovailoa cracked upon hearing the response.

The point was it’s hard, in McDaniel’s complex offense, to retain the call that’s coming in, relay it to the other 10 members of the huddle, get aligned, go through pre-snap reads and motions and finally snap the football all within 40 seconds.

That showed up at the worst time for the Dolphins last season, when third-string quarterback Skylar Thompson was forced into starting duties in a playoff loss at the Buffalo Bills plagued by numerous delay-of-game penalties and other pre-snap flags.

On paper, Tagovailoa didn’t have a good practice Wednesday. He threw two interceptions, each one of them returned for a touchdown. The last of which put the exclamation point on the joint session for the Texans as standout safety Jalen Pitre jumped a slant route thrown to wide receiver Robbie Chosen and returned it about 85 yards on the final play of drills.

And this comes after a three-interception practice against the Dolphins defense Sunday, an interception in each of the two joint practices with the Atlanta Falcons last week and a scrimmage a week and a half ago where Tagovailoa threw another pair of interceptions and was not pleased with how the offense functioned overall.

The big plays — whether touchdowns or interceptions — always stand out most when assessing a quarterback’s practice performance. That’s natural. It’s a big part of how observers analyze a passer’s play in games.

This sometimes lacks context of what the offense and defense are working on in a particular practice, or if the unit is experimenting to try things in training camp and identify if it could work come the regular season.

“I think we’re trying to put a lot more stress on our guys in the back end with our motions and understanding what to do play-wise,” Tagovailoa said. “There’s a lot of things that we got going on this year that Mike’s wanting to try for our guys and trying to see who does what the best and try to go from there. So that’s really all it is.

“Operation is always going to be a key for us to just get in the huddle, get the play-call, get out so that we can see everything. Get our guys going in and play.”

Players sometimes view it differently when they can tell the offense was operating correctly, paying attention to the process over the results.

“I liked (Wednesday’s practice),” left tackle Terron Armstead said. “We’ve been having some challenges, some struggles. More so, just the timing and the vibe of the offense, trying to run that operation and make it run like a machine, and we haven’t been able to do that the way that we have grown accustomed to when we’re rolling.

“(Wednesday) felt normal. It felt more normal. Still had some hiccups, of course, but from an operation standpoint, it felt like a real offense.”

All that said, there still were the two pick-sixes thrown by Tagovailoa, which would be huge momentum swingers if occurring in a game.

Before Pitre got him to finish a late simulated two-minute drill, former Alabama teammate, linebacker Christian Harris, read Tagovailoa on a short pass to the left in Miami territory.

“I think it’s what I’ve done best, is looking guys off and no-looking throws into holes like that,” Tagovailoa said. “I talked to Christian Harris — buddy, Alabama — and he told me that, ‘Dude, you did that so much to us last year that like I was like, okay, just trust my drop in this area.’ And he’s like, ‘I’m not falling for it.’ And that’s basically what happened. So it’s a good play for him.”

It was something Tagovailoa figured defenders that go against him wouldn’t pick up and adjust to, but Harris did. Now, Tagovailoa can keep that information in his back pocket and understand it could happen in a game.

And the that last one to Pitre: “Man, I wish I could have that one back. That one, I was trying to maneuver someone, and it didn’t work out with one of the receivers and that was the only place to ditch the ball. I probably should have just sailed it to the ground, but it’s a good play by him.”

Off the field, Tagovailoa is working to raise funds for victims of the recent Maui wildfires through his foundation. After first learning about the natural disaster last week in a press conference, he has since opened a donations page that, as of Wednesday evening, has raised $77,493 from 607 supporters toward a $100,000 goal.

“Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families,” Tagovailoa said. “I have a couple of friends that live on Maui that spent a lot of time on Oahu because they work on Oahu and they go back and forth to their families. But just a lot of prayers and thoughts going out to those families out there.”