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Tua Tagovailoa has nothing to prove in college football. The Alabama Crimson Tide quarterback has won a national title, guided his team to another appearance, finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting in 2018 and, for all intents and purposes, is still projected to be a top-10 NFL Draft pick in 2020 despite the hip injury he sustained this season.
While Tua Tagovailoa has a stacked college football resume, that doesn’t mean he’s absolutely done with it quite yet. That’s according to Tua himself, who actually said he’s actually considering a comeback to the Crimson Tide next season to, get this, potentially increase his draft stock.
Talking to ESPN, Tagovailoa talked about his current state of mind, while addressing his football future.
Per AL.com:
“I think you’ve got to think of both sides of the spectrum,” Tagovailoa said during the interview. “You think of risk-reward on coming back. You think of risk-reward on leaving. If I come back, the risk is, well, what if I get hurt again? But the reward could be maybe I jump back to the top of the charts, the boards for all these teams.
“Now you look at the other side of the spectrum if I leave. Well, the risk is, do I still go in the first round or do I even make it to the second round? These guys don’t even know if I can play with the hip injury yet, too. And then, I’d say the reward in all that is, yeah, I’ll be getting paid millions, but a lot of the money that you could have made you can’t make that money up. What I feel is heavy on my heart that is the right thing to do for me then I’ll do it, whether it’s tomorrow, or on the 20th of January.”
Would Tua Tagovailoa really consider coming back to the Crimson Tide? It doesn’t seem to make sense on the surface — especially with some of the nagging injuries he’s sustained over the past year. But, continued in his interview with ESPN, the quarterback did say that he wouldn’t make any emotional decision, and would strictly base everything off of business.
“Now’s not the time to be making emotional decisions,” Tagovailoa said during the ESPN interview. “Now you’ve got to change into thinking as a businessman. You’ve got to make business decisions. And it’s just going to be a business decision we’d have to make as a family. But my parents would tell you, it’d end up coming down to my decision.”
This makes zero sense to me whatsoever. Is Tua Tagovailoa the most talented quarterback in the 2020 NFL Draft? Probably. Does he still have flaws? Absolutely. And should there be concerns about his hip and the upcoming recovery? Sure. But, when healthy, this dude was a lock to be the No. 1 overall pick, and, as we’ve seen in the past, some NFL teams salivate over prospects and make up their minds well before meeting these players in person, so my guess is that Tua enters the draft and falls somewhere in the top-10.
While a top-10 pick is nice, when you consider Tagovailoa was projected to be the No. 1 pick by many up until his injury, maybe the signal-caller doesn’t think “just” top-10 is good enough. It’ll be interesting to see what he ends up doing when all is said and done.