Tua’s huge day leads Miami Dolphins’ comeback win at Detroit. But warning signs are there | Opinion

Tua. Just start there.

Tua Tagovailoa outscored the Detroit Lions and overcame his own team’s defensive lapses and penalties on Sunday in a 31-27 comeback victory that should (won’t , but should) silence any doubts about his being the Miami Dolphins’ quarterback answer moving forward.

Having Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle doesn’t hurt.

Getting one gift by draft and the other by trade has given Tua with the chance to succeed in Year 3 for him, but you have to take advantage. And he has. He is.

Don’t get it wrong. A narrow win over a now 1-6 Lions team with defensive issues is no great accomplishment, maybe. But any come-from-behind win on the road is, especially when it is your second win in a row to move the season record to 5-3 and keep Miami playoff-headed.

“I don’t think the goal of any game is really perfection. It’s more growth,” said first-year coach Mike McDainiel. “I think this game was one where we’re able to come out with a victory because of certain things that we’ve gone through.”

Tagovailoa was brilliant, completing 29 of 36 passes for 382 yards and three touchdowns. with no interceptions. Hill and Waddle together caught 20 passes for 294 yards, and the end-zone Waddle Dance was done twice.

Miami andMcDaniel have to find a way to get this thing into the postseason because because Tua throwing deep to either of his main targets is the best thing the franchise had had going in the air since Dan Marino was aiming of Marks Brothers Clayton and Duper.

Let’s be real, though. Miami won in part because it played a bad team with a lousy defense.

Miami won in spite of itself, in a way.

We’re bearing down on midseason of a year when the Dolphins are marking the 50th anniversary of the club’s 1972 Perfect Season, so allow me to recall the last conversation I ever had with Don Shula before he died at age 90 in 2020.

It pertains to the Fins’ game on Sunday.

In a career retrospective chat I asked what Shula was most proud and of course he mentioned the most career victories and the 17-0 pinnacle but before that I was surprised to hear him say, “We took a lot of pride in being the least-penalized team year after year, being smart, never beating ourselves.”

A simple thing. A baseline fundamental.

The Dolphins on Sunday committed seven penalties and committed a bunch more that Detroit declined. The only turnover of the game was a costly early fumble lost after a catch by Miami’s Braylon Sanders -- how not to take advantage of just having been called up to the active roster.

Entering the game Miami had 23 more penalties than its opponents this season, worst differential in the NFL.

Also, Miami’s pass defense was quite awful early on, making Jared Goff look way better than he is. There were warning signs in the win.

And this team’s special teams play continues to be pretty dreadful.

If Miami went on to miss the playoffs in McDaniel’s first season, the what-ifs would have pivoted back to Halloween Eve and a loss to an inferior Lions team.

But, instead, a Dolphins defense that gave up 27 points in the first half allowed zero in the second.

And a Miami offense that has underwhelmed this season -- partly due to Tagovailoa missing most of three games with a concussion -- blossomed and teased with its potential.

The postgame was such feelgood that Tagovailoa sat in the aftermath press conference listening to Waddle walk and played journalist with a question of his own.

The Dolphins sail into midseason on the upbeat, buoyed by optimism, and led by a quarterback earning more and more trust, and faith.

That isn’t nothing.

It’s a lot, as a matter of fact.