Dolphins backups begin round one of QB battle against Falcons

To no one’s surprise, Tua Tagovailoa won’t play in Friday night’s preseason opener against the Atlanta Falcons.

The Miami Dolphins’ starting quarterback hasn’t played in the first exhibition game the past two years of the Mike McDaniel era, and there’s certainly little need considering he’s beginning his fifth season as a starter for the Dolphins, which signed him to a five-year deal worth $235.5 million last month.

And Tagovailoa is far from the only Dolphins starter expected to sit out tonight’s game.

It’s easier to list the prominent players participating in Friday night’s game - safety Marcus Maye, rookies Patrick Paul and Chop Robinson, pass rusher Quinton Bell - than those who aren’t.

And numerous Dolphins players - mature veterans like Jordan Poyer, Terron Armstead, Kendall Fuller and Calais Campbell - who have a load management workload during training camp, likely won’t participate in much, if any of the Dolphins preseason.

Skylar Thompson will seemingly start the game, but he and Mike White be playing a half each since the Dolphins only have three quarterbacks on the training camp roster.

“I thought it was a pretty close race with Mike winning it [last year]. They’ve continued to develop their games,” McDaniel said earlier this week. “So how do you make the opportunities as equal as possible? Well, for me, I try to create a scenario where they get to work with the same players that are blocking and the same players that are receiving routes or getting handoffs. That’s a little tricky because you can’t just play, there’s a lot of position battles that that need to be settled outside the quarterback position.”

Whoever finishes the game will face the most difficult challenge of the contest because they’ll be working with a third-team offensive line, which has struggled at times during the preseason, primarily when it comes to the quarterback-to-center exchange.

They’ll also be working with receivers who are either undrafted rookies (Florida Atlantic’s Je’Quan Burton), or players like Willie Snead IV or Mike Harley Jr., who have spent a week or less with the team. That means they’ll likely have a limited knowledge of the playbook. But the call sheet will probably be heavily restricted in the preseason.

The Dolphins center play will be under the most scrutiny during Friday night’s game because of Aaron Brewer’s right hand injury, who was one of the team’s top free agent acquisitions this spring, suffered at the end of Wednesday’s joint practice with the Falcons.

There has been no update given on Brewer’s injury, but the expectation is that Liam Eichenberg will serve as the starting center if Brewer is sidelined for a few weeks. However, Eichenberg and all of Miami’s projected starting offensive linemen, aren’t participating in tonight’s exhibition game.

Jack Driscoll, a free agent addition, Andrew Meyer, an undrafted rookie from UTEP, and Sean Harlow, a fifth-year veteran added this week will handle snapping for the entire game.

Robert Jones, who is manning the starting left guard spot until Isaiah Wynn comes off the physically unable to perform list, also won’t play, which means the Dolphins will be giving linemen deep on the depth chart an opportunity to play their way on, or off the 53-man roster and the practice squad.