Yes, I had to look up the spelling!
If you haven’t seen it, I recommend that you check out Tua’s Monday press conference when he announced his return.
Tua was angry. It made me angry. Because I was right.
Tua confirmed the one thing I’ve been saying ever since the night he got hurt. I hate being right in many cases concerning the Dolphins, and this is one of them.
Tua was fine the very next day after his injury. He immediately went into the NFL-mandated concussion protocol and Tua himself confirmed that he was healthy enough to play. He passed the tests.
The Dolphins had 10 days off between the Bills Thursday game and the following Sunday game. They could have held Tua out of practice to be safe.
Maybe, if you wanted to be overly safe, have him sit out the Seahawk game. We’d probably lose that one anyway.
But to have your star QB–who passed protocol and was cleared to play–go on IR? That was the entire Dolphin organization simply bending over to the political pressure from all the pundits out there.
Stephen Ross does not mind losing games. But he does mind losing public relation battles.
It would have been a publicity nightmare if the Dolphins put Tua back in action. But we would have won the Colts and Titans games. We’d be sitting at 4-2 right now instead of 2-4.
Bad publicity can be beaten away by a couple of wins. The Colts and Titans cannot be beaten by 3rd stringer Snoop Huntley.
Watch Tua’s face when he was speaking about this. He says the right words, but his expressions speak volumes. He was pissed. I love the fact that he was pissed.
He was pissed that the Dolphins’ brass (Ross/Grier) FORCED him to go onto I.R. when he was healthy enough to play. When were you cleared to play? The next day. Do you have to get back into shape? No, I’ve been throwing and running every day. Are you ready to play? Yes, I’ve been ready right after the Bills game. He mildly acknowledges that the Dolphins were trying to protect him, but you can tell he doesn’t agree with that p.c. statement, obviously provided to him by the p.r. department.
This is how the Dolphins do things. While other owners find any and every way to get their star players to win games, the Dolphins give up and listen to ESPN pundits. “Oh, the sky is falling Tua has to retire.” Meanwhile, Josh Allen lands on his head and sits out one play. Same injury, different management mindsets.
The Bills want to defeat the opponent. The Dolphins want to keep talk show hosts satisfied. “We better not let Tua play, even though he is healthy. People might talk about us.”
A small part of me thought that Tua might address the media and say, “Yes, I was banged up pretty good and I really really needed the I.R. to help me recover.” In that case, I would have eaten my words. But no. He did not need the time off after all. Even the NFL-mandated doctors cleared him.
Ross and Grier panicked worse than Mike McDaniel panicking over a time out call. And in all likelihood, they blew up our entire season by caving in to the pundits.

this was Tua’s FOURTH concussion, so not a fair comparison.
If you recall the response to Tua’s first concussion in that 2022 game vs. Buffalo, the response ‘diagnosis’ was back problem, whenever clearly looked like he had his bell ring. so that response was similar in it’s concussion minimization
I disagree, the 4 week suspension was necessary. it was his fourth concussion.
I think the four game IR designation was more to teach reckless Tua a lesson and maybe offer him a timeout to think more about his decision making. As you argue, pundit peer pressure was a factor, but probably only a little bit, and so was health caution, but the Dolphins just signed a 200+ million dollar contract with their star quarterback and that thick-headed QB promptly dove head first into another concussion.
It was nice to see same anger and fire in Tua at the Press Conf. But I am afraid his ire is not because of not winning (otherwise we would have seen it before). his ire is at not being allowed to play.
I hope the Dolphins got Tua to sign a liability waiver.
I think for many of these concussions Tua was fine. I think the NFL and all the commentators have harped on Tua being small and injury prone since before the draft and in the area of helicopter mothers the NFL decided to make Tua the poster child for how they will protect children who play their sport! Remember a few years ago the NFL announced it was trying to attract more woman to be fans of the sport and hence we have seen all kinds of changes so children can’t be hit hard, no hitting mom’s don’t like that! Unfortunately we have an owner who can not say NO when the NFL wants to use his Franchise for a social experiment!
With being concussed four times, our Mega Millions QB is not very smart! Why would he put his head down? He knows better but he chose to do what he wanted to do…was it to show how tough he is? His size seems to be discussed in many circles and maybe he wants to change people’s thinking about that. Watching a few games yesterday, some rookie QB’s have it all over Tua. Tua will be trying to come in and win to show he is ok and a top tier QB-that’s the beginning of a disaster cuz he’s not top tier.