For two years, the knock on Tua Tagovailoa has been a lack of arm strength, that he just doesn’t create dynamic plays downfield; that he doesn’t throw enough scores. In 2020, he finished 30th out of 37 qualifying quarterbacks in YPA — a stat largely driven by downfield throws. That was dead-last among the great 2019 rookie class. In short, he just has to be better.
However, is such criticism overall necessarily fair? Not without looking at the entire picture, and that is what we’re going to do today.
The first thing to know is that Tua spent his entire amateur career running a variant of the run and shoot in Hawaii and then an RPO-based spread at Alabama.