Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa has a vivid memory of the CFP national-championship for the 2018 season.
“We lost,” said Tagovailoa, who was Alabama’s quarterback in the Crimson Tide’s 44-16 setback against Clemson on Jan. 7, 2019.
Alabama was the defending national champion and undefeated entering the contest. Tagovailoa, the Heisman Trophy runner-up that season, threw for 295 and two touchdowns against the Tigers.
“Any time you lose any of those games, they stick with you,” Tagovailoa said on Wednesday, “and I wasn’t happy about that performance, the way we came out as a team offensively especially. But it is what it is. You learn from all those mistakes, and you grow from that, but it wasn’t a good memory.”
Tagovailoa’s counterpart in the game, Clemson QB Trevor Lawrence, passed for 347 yards and three touchdowns.
“I think he made a statement in who he was as a player and just in general,” Tagovailoa said of Lawrence. “That was his freshman year, too. Him coming in the national-championship game, leading his team -- and we had a really good Alabama team, too, and he did what he had to do, and they killed us.”
Tagovailoa and Lawrence will cross paths again on Sunday, when the Dolphins face the Jacksonville Jaguars to open the NFL season. Tagovailoa said the game doesn’t hold special significance because of Lawrence on the other sideline.
“I’m not playing him,” Tagovailoa said. “He doesn’t play defense. I’m not playing against him. I’m playing against their defense, the scheme that their guy has for them -- and they’ve got a good scheme.”
Both Tagovailoa and Lawrence will make their 53rd NFL starts in Sunday’s game, which kicks off at noon CDT at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. Although Tagovailoa was the No. 5 pick in the 2020 NFL Draft and Lawrence was the No. 1 pick in the 2021 NFL Draft, Tagovailoa did not play immediately for Miami and Lawrence has started every game but one since joining the Jaguars.
Tagovailoa and Lawrence have squared off once previously as NFL starting quarterbacks. On Oct. 17, 2021, the Jaguars defeated the Dolphins 23-20 with a field goal on the final play of the game. Tagovailoa threw for 329 yards and two touchdowns and Lawrence passed for 319 yards and one touchdown in that contest.
Jacksonville’s offensive coordinator for that game, Darrell Bevell, is now Tagovailoa’s position coach with Miami. The Jaguars have a new defensive coordinator, Ryan Nielsen, who held that position for the New Orleans Saints in 2022 and Atlanta Falcons in 2023.
“You want to think you’re ready for anything, but you never know until you go out there,” Tagovailoa said. “Schematically, we think we know what they’re going to do. But until we go out and run our plays and get a feel of what they’re doing with their run fits, with the back end in coverage, how they’re trying to marry both up with each other, you really don’t know if you are. You’ve just got to go out there, get a feel, and like I said, they haven’t really put on film as a team what they do and what they do well, so I think it’s also for them, they’re trying to figure that out as well, too.”
