Day 17 – Miami Dolphins 2022 Training Camp vs. Philadelphia Notebook

(Coach Darrell Bevell) told me any route. I said, ‘what route do you want to run?’ He said any route. So ‘Coach Bev’ jumped in and said, ‘Hey, I want to hear the crowd cheer.’ So I said, just run a go. So we ran a go route and Tyreek caught the ball, so that was cool.”

That’s how Tagovailoa described the decision behind going deep to Tyreek on the first play Wednesday.

If today’s practice were a script for the silver screen, the writers went heavy on the foreshadowing from the first play. Granted, one-on-one drills favor the receivers, but the consistent separation created by Tyreek Hill drew “ooh and ahhs” from the crowd each time.

The 30-yard touchdown connection was just the start. Tagovailoa had it all working on Wednesday. He threw with touch and timing, shown on a beautiful 20-yard completion to Cedrick Wilson Jr. Before Wilson got out of his break, the ball was in-flight between a pair of defenders, splitting them with precision.

Later, the Eagles dialed up an overload pressure creating a free run in the lap of the Miami quarterback. Tagovailoa stayed poised and found Salvon Ahmed in the nick of time to the area vacated by the blitz, springing the speedy back up the sideline 25 yards before first contact.

Hill made another play, this one also against the blitz, in which Tagovailoa bought time by fading away from the pressure and getting the ball immediately airborne. The intersection of the ball’s descent and Hill’s route married up with perfect synergy for another huge chunk of yardage.

On top of the processing to beat blitz looks and the anticipation to thread tight windows, Tagovailoa’s ball placement was on-point. We’ll cover that and the many weapons at his disposal in a later takeaway.

Above all, if camp and the preseason are any indication, Tagovailoa is taking to the instruction of Head Coach Mike McDaniel. In an interview with Siriu XM’s NFL channel, McDaniel praised Tagovailoa’s approach and professionalism.