It’s no secret, Tua Taogovailoa is good at football. If his school passing records didn’t convince you from a year ago then maybe yesterday’s win against Duke helped change your mind.
After a rocky start in the first quarter, Alabama’s offense was firing on all cylinders hitting wide-open receivers for large chunks of yards along with back-breaking third down conversions. Tagovailoa was the driving force of all this. Alabama never truly got the running game going the way head coach Nick Saban would’ve probably liked, but his Heisman caliber quarterback could shoulder much of the responsibility.
Tagovailoa extended a couple of plays with his feet and hit his receivers in stride throughout the majority of the game.
“Obviously I thought offensively, once we got things going, we executed fairly well. I thought Tua played really well,” said Saban. I think 3rddown was a big difference in the game. We actually were 6 of 9 in the first half on third down, which kept a lot of drives going.”
The Hawaiian based signal-caller finished the game 26/31 for 336 yards and four touchdowns.
If you googled the word efficient, this stat line may pop up.
But it wasn’t just Saban who was impressed with the performance of the quarterback. Duke head coach David Cutcliffe was arguably more amazed by the junior.
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“Well, he is incredible,” said Cutcliffe in the post-game press conference. “He’s accurate. He’s poised. His release is so compact and supple and quick. He can throw on the run.
“But I said this – I’ve studied him now. I had never studied him until this summer. I think he’s going to be a great quarterback this year, and he will play in the National Football League for a long time. He’s going to be a great player.”
High praise from someone who worked with Peyton and Eli Manning throughout their careers. Even though Duke may not be the most talented roster in the country, seeing Tagovailoa already displaying his improvements week one is a scary sight.
Last season one of the knocks on Tagovailoa’s game was his tendency to hold on to the football and take some unnecessary hits. On Saturday, he still held onto the ball to extend plays but he showed the ability to slide to avoid hits and throw the ball away/hand it off depending on certain reads.
If the offense can find the same consistency it had in the second half of the game throughout an entire 60 minutes, then it will give the crimson tide another shot at running straight into another College Football Playoff and likely another national championship appearance.
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Patrick Dowd is a Reporter for Touchdown Alabama Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter, via Pat_Dowd77
