McDaniels’ play-calling has come under scrutiny after Thursday’s defeat, the third straight for the Dolphins in the NFL 2025 regular season. As they prepare to face the Jets in Week 4, concerns around McDaniel’s future loom large, with some reports even touting the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Super Bowl-winning coach, Mike Tomlin, to take over the reins at Pittsburgh.

However, with the dust now settled on Thursday’s defeat, NFL Insider Tom Pelissero has delivered a crushing verdict on Miami Dolphins QB Tua Tagovailoa. During an appearance on the Rich Eisen Show, McDaniel said that Tua Tagovailoa’s limitations as QB is responsible for Miami’s woes.

“I mean, there’s not enough said, and I don’t mean to just be a Mike McDaniel defender here, but there is not enough talked about with the hoops that Mike McDaniel has to jump through on a week-in, week-out basis to design a game plan for a quarterback who can’t get hit,” Pelissero said.

“You can’t have him holding the ball. You can’t have him design runs. You can’t really run quarterback sneaks,” he continued.

“We’ve seen some of the, you know, in relative terms, the least athletic quarterbacks in the NFL get exposed at times as runners. Tom Brady ran a pass route in the Super Bowl. It didn’t end well, but they put that in the game plan. You can’t do that with Tua. You can’t run a naked bootleg.”

Tua Tagovailoa had a bad day against the Buffalo Bills on Thursday, completing only 22 of 34 passes for just 236 yards, scoring two touchdowns, a passing accuracy of just 64.7 percent.

Mike McDaniel on the background

Tua Tagovailoa was full of consternation as he spoke to reporters after Thursday’s defeat to the Bills. As Miami mounted a comeback attempt in the final minutes of Thursday’s game, Tagovailoa threw a pass that was intercepted by the Bills, thereby shutting down a possible Miami resurgence.

Despite the individual criticism, Tua said that it is a team sport and the responsibility for the loss is collective.

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“No moral victories, that’s for sure,” Tua said. “There’s definitely some things that we can take away that is good, that’s up to par within our standard of how we operate within the offense. And then with how the defense wants to operate, as well, getting the stops. When they get those stops, we gotta capitalize on that and allow ourselves to get points when we get those opportunities.

“Never good to lose regardless of how a certain individual may have felt they performed. This is a team sport. We win together, we lose together.”