A native of Hawaii who played his college ball at Alabama before heading to Miami, Tua Tagovailoa's football playing days have largely been under sunny skies with warm, if not sweltering, temperatures.
That is not forecasted to be the situation on Saturday.
Tagovailoa and the warm-blooded Dolphins will be facing off with the Kansas City Chiefs, reigning Super Bowl champions and inhabitants of a Missouri home that’s likely to have an unwelcoming single-digit temperature at kickoff.
It’ll be a frigidly new experience for the Pro Bowler.
“I think maybe 20 [degrees]?” Tagovailoa said Wednesday, via team transcript, about the coldest temperature he’s ever dealt with. “Or like a little lower than 20? Nothing lower than I would say, 15. So probably in between there.”
Thus, as Tagovailoa looks to earn his first NFL postseason win Saturday, he’ll be dealing with elements completely novel to him. Nevertheless, Tagovailoa knows he’ll have to heat up somehow, so pregame will be as important as ever from what he recalls from a high school all-star game in Seattle that was the setting for the aforementioned 15-20 degree temps.
“I think it’s just a feel of how everything is, what the ball feels like, what throwing feels like, what holding the ball feels like, if there’s wind, if there’s not wind, you have to take all those things into consideration,” he said. “But we’ll go there, we’ll test it out and we’ll see what we have to do as far as adjusting or not.”
As seen on an episode of Hard Knocks In Season: The Miami Dolphins, Tagovailoa and his QB room brethren received Isotoner gloves as a Christmas president from Dan Marino, the team’s special advisor to the vice chairman, president and CEO along with being a former Isotoner pitchman and one of the greatest QBs ever.
Tagovailoa said he’s unlikely to bring his Christmas gifts to KC.
“Probably no Isotoner gloves, but I’m going to see what we can wear for the game,” he said. “You can’t prepare for a game like that with that kind of weather, so it’ll be new.”
Tagovailoa’s unlikely to wear any gloves, an important decision for any quarterback as they weigh playing more comfortably in the elements and properly gripping the ball.
“I’ll just see what it feels like without gloves,” he said. “I just think the whole thing is a mindset.”
The weather isn’t the only unique aspect of Saturday for Tagovailoa.
Though the Dolphins are headed back to the playoffs for the second consecutive season, their starting quarterback was injured and missed last year’s postseason tilt. No stranger to big games at Bama, Tagovailoa will be making his NFL postseason debut.
“There’s a lot of new guys on this team and I think it’s a different team,” he said. “I think a lot of the guys, we all want to do it right. It just sucks when we’re not able to with the work that we put in. But it’s a new season, the way we look at it. New season, new opportunity, and we can still get to where we want to get to after this week. But for me, I mean, not much I can say from me missing last year to now except for me missing it. So that was it.”
In a game rife with storylines -- Tyreek Hill's return to Arrowhead Stadium, Tagovailoa’s playoff debut, the Chiefs’ Super Bowl defense, etc. -- the icy temps have garnered headlines.
Chiefs head coach Andy Reid doesn’t think his team necessarily has a homefield advantage, if for no other reason that a football game is being played, not a “snowball fight.”
Still, it’ll be a new setting for the Polynesian Tagovailoa.
“I don’t think I could compare this to anything because it’s all new,” Tagovailoa said. “Everything is all new. This is a different feeling than it was in the national championship game. Different feeling than it was in the SEC Championship game. I think they all come from new feelings. But the way I cope with it is go about my business the way I’ve been going about my business, take care of my job and trust my teammates will do the same with theirs.”