Bryce Young takes Tua Tagovailoa to heart for words of encouragement and experience

We’re roughly a third of the way through another NFL season, and like all those before it, we’ve already pieced together plenty of great moments in our individual, internal scrapbooks.

Great plays, horrible blunders, amazing efforts, questionable decisions.

But nothing stopped me in my tracks quite like something that happened after last Sunday’s game in Miami, where the Dolphins hammered the winless Panthers.

It’s normal for the two opposing quarterbacks to find each other on the field during the postgame meet-and-greet that’s become part of the modern game’s routine.

Each QB knows the difficulties involved with the pro game, along with the physical courage needed (yes, even in today’s era of QB protection), so the respect flows. But it generally flows quickly and then they’re off to shake other hands before hitting the locker room.

But this was very different. Miami’s Tua Tagovailoa and Carolina rookie Bryce Young share Alabama Crimson Tide lineage, share the burden of high expectations, share in the knowledge of what it’s like to struggle like never before — Bryson currently, Tua in the not-so-distant past.

Tua held Bryson chest-to-chest, leaned in and talked to him. Bryson just listened. And Tua kept talking. It was quickly obvious this was no ordinary platitudes and simple handshakes. Tua talked more. And in the end, an official handshake and another quick hug before departing in opposite directions — literally and, it seems, for now, figuratively.

As for specifics of the talk, Tua told reporters later, “if I was on the other side of the ball, I would want someone to tell me.”

To a certain degree, Tua entered the NFL as damaged goods, recovering from a horrible hip injury suffered in his final season at Alabama. Early struggles saw him benched. After those struggles ebbed and he started pointing in a positive direction, there were the two concussions last year.

Tua knows about question marks. But for the here and now, he’s leading the league’s scariest offense and directing it in near flawless fashion. He surely passed along all that mileage to Bryce Young.

“There's going to be times where you're going to make mistakes because you're a rookie, and there's things that when he plays the next game, that he wished he knew this game, and he'll continue to grow from that,” Tua said.

And then the hard part: “I just told him to keep the press, the naysayers, other people … that's just external factors. They're going to say what they're going to say, but you continue to believe in yourself, you continue to do the right things, you're going to go far."

Not sure what effect it might have on Young, but it was surely appreciated.

“Great player, great person,” Young said of Tua. “He definitely did give some words of wisdom and stuff that I'll hold onto.”

For Bryce Young, of course, now comes the hard part: Living up to the expectations.

As for Tua, the scene only solidified what we’ve already come to know about a special player and, by all accounts, wonderful teammate, role model and, yep, mentor.

HEY, WILLIE!

Well, you did it again! Wrote a touching article (Oct. 15) about some of the recent NFL deaths and used an old Ed Bruce song to illustrate the losses. You had me humming Ed’s “The Last Cowboy Song” all morning.

Just goes to show you, there’s a classic country song appropriate for almost every situation. I still listen to today’s country but I think William Michael Morgan says it all: “Ain’t nobody broken hearted in country music anymore.”

BOB G

THE LAST COWBOY Walt Garrison adds to 2023 football losses, following Dick Butkus and others | KEN WILLIS

HEY, BOB!

When I was young, Ed Bruce had several hit songs while Earle Bruce was coaching Ohio State and, as far as I know, couldn’t carry a tune in a water bucket. That didn’t keep me from often confusing the two. Yes, occasionally in print.

Next comes an email from the widow of John Brockington, the 1970s Packers great who was among the departures written about Sunday.

HEY, WILLIE!

Amid a lot of snark that has come to characterize sports reporting, it’s nice to see good men, good players, get their due.

So, thanks to sports reporting like yours that offers memories, comfort, and as you say, smiles. John had a great one.

DIANE BROCKINGTON

John Brockington Foundation

John and his wife, Diane, founded the foundation to help others receive the organ transplants needed to resume normal life or perhaps life at all. They do it through Transplant Trekkers, and you can get info on either or both: JohnBrockingtonFoudation.org or TransplantTrekkers.org.

Rank & File

The weekly ranking of Florida’s seven big-league college football programs, based on results versus expectations, current trends, and some Ouija Board insight from Beano Cook (“Tell ’em I can HEAR them!”).

1. FSU (6-0). This week: Duke at home. In normal years, FSU would be looking beyond this week and, likely, even beyond the next two weeks (Wake, Pitt) to the Miami game on Nov. 11. But in the year of multiple Super Blue Moons, the Blue Devils are serving up their rare dose of quality, so buckle up. The pick: ’Noles by just 3.

2. Florida (5-2). This week: Off. Hate to be the buzz-kill coming off that thrilling win in Columbia, but look at the rest of the schedule and tell me you’re 100% sure the Gators will be bowl-eligible at season’s end. Man, what a rough road ahead, even beyond the next one. Next week: Georgia in Jacksonville.

3. FAU (3-3). This week: Texas-San Antonio at home. Wow, who saw that 56-14 shellacking of USF coming? It’s still very early, but first-year Owls coach Tom Herman might be coaching his way back to a Power 5 job. Or at least a rumor. Huh, what's that? Oh, sorry, Beano just told me to hold off on that kinda talk for a few weeks. The pick: Owls by 6.

4. Miami (4-2). This week: Clemson at home. Did you have these two teams meeting midseason with a combined 2-4 ACC record? Losing coach in this one can’t look big donors in the eyes for the rest of the calendar year. The pick: ’Canes by 6.

5. UCF (3-3). This week: at Oklahoma. Good news, Knights fans. You won’t be seeing this opponent on the schedule anymore. The pick: Sooners by 28.

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6. USF (3-4). This week: at UConn. Following last week’s embarrassing beat-down by FAU, the Bulls’ season needs a quick lifeline, and the Huskies almost always throw the rope. The pick: Bulls by 10.

7. FIU (3-4). This week: Played at Sam Houston late Wednesday night. Sam’s Bearkats are winless in their first C-USA season. FIU is 0-2 halfway through its slate of four straight Hump Night games. Something had to give … finish reading this, then go online to find out who won.

The (other) Picks

Call it one of those weird quirks of our solar system, but for some reason, we just can’t seem to get the three service academies playing quality football simultaneously.

Navy was up for a decade or more, then went into a funk after going 11-2 in 2019. The Midshipmen are 14-26 in three-plus seasons since.

As if taking the baton from a soon-to-sink Navy, Army awakened and went 24-13 from 2020-22 before this year’s 2-4 start.

It’s Air Force, however, that seems to take the big swings, from occasionally bad to often middlin’ to a now-and-then season of nine-plus wins. Right now, the ironically ground-based Falcons are soaring in their own grind-it-out fashion — an 11-game win streak and current 6-0 record that now comes with a national ranking (22nd!).

This week the Falcons go to Annapolis to face Navy, and while we don’t know how good of a game it’ll be, it figures to be quick — the two teams have combined for just 109 pass attempts this year, with just 28 of them from Air Force (completed 20, by the way).

This winner of this year’s Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy gets a leg up Saturday, and with midweek news of Air Force QB Zac Larrier being sidelined with a knee injury, the port smells like an upset — Navy by 6.

● Elsewhere: Ohio State over Penn State; Tennessee by 2 over Alabama; Oregon big over Washington State; Wake beats Pitt; Michigan big over Sparty; Oklahoma State by 9 over WVU; Ole Miss big over Auburn; Texas beats Houston; N. Carolina by 18 over UVA; Utah in OT over USC; and the William Paterson Pioneers, at home in Wayne, N.J., over the Red Hawks of Montclair State.

BTW: The term “Founding Fathers” didn’t immediately bubble up with our nation’s birth in the late 1700s. George Washington, John Jay and the rest probably would’ve rejected it, anyway, preferring to wait and see how it all works out before claiming paternity.

Nope, they were sometimes called the “fathers” or the “founders,” and eventually “forefathers,” but it was former President Warren Harding, in a 1916 speech and again in his 1921 inauguration, who coined the term Founding Fathers.

Why bring that up? Because William Paterson might be one of the most underrated of those daddies. Along with his work in the Constitutional Convention, he served as a U.S. Senator from New Jersey, governor of New Jersey, and finally Supreme Court justice.

Not a bad run, but lingering effects from a stage-coach fall led to his 1806 death at age 60, and made a widow of his second wife, Euphemia.

You heard me: Euphemia.

— Reach Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Tua Tagovailoa, Bryce Young, and wise words; and Navy over Air Force?