The Buffalo Bills will face the Miami Dolphins and quarterback Tua Tagovailoa for the first time this year in Week 2 on Sunday. The New England Patriots and cornerback JC Jackson already have gotten their dose.
And despite losing 17-16 to the Dolphins last week, the Patriots cornerback was none too impressed with the Dolphins QB in Week 1.
Following the game, Jackson gave his candid impression of Tagovailoa.
“If he doesn’t have his first read, he just is going to throw the ball up and that’s when we capitalize on defense when he makes mistakes like that,” Jackson said, per Patriots Wire.
“Yeah, pretty much we did (confuse him),” Jackson added. “We just have to finish the last few minutes of the game.”
Ouch.
Calling a quarterback a one-read player is certainly not commonplace, nor the nicest thing to say.
But even Tagovailoa didn’t give himself flying colors.
“I think we played complementary football, but to an extent we didn’t take advantage of a lot of the opportunities the defense gave us with a lot of the turnovers, but I thought overall there are a lot things we need to clean up offensively. I think the defense gave us a lot of opportunities and we just got to make use of those,” he said.
As the QB referenced, Miami’s defense had two turnovers in the game.
Personally, Tagovailoa was 16-for-27 passing with 207 yards and a touchdown. Tagovailoa also had a bit of an ugly interception.
Under duress, Tagovailoa tossed a ball toward the sideline and New England cornerback Jonathan Jones come down with the ball.
Really it could’ve been grabbed by one of three Patriots defenders. At the end of the ugly toss, none of Tagovailoa’s teammates were near it.
Tagovailoa said that he was trying to throw it away, but it ended up going down as a mistake that a young quarterback would make.
The Bills will hope to take advantage of such miscues against Miami in Week 2 as the Patriots did. But they’ll hope to do so in a win.