Read the full transcript from Tua Tagovailoa's press conference on September 10, 2024.
Q: S Jordan Poyer and CB Siran Neal, can they help you at all this week?
"Yeah, they definitely can. They know in the backend signals with what the Bills do and how they communicate things that they've done to stop us previous years. And then just kind of the philosophy of that defense with what they try to accomplish against our offense – uniquely different than a lot of the teams they would play against, so can take a lot of the information that I've been given from those guys early in the week and apply it to Thursday."
Q: It's so early in the season but how important does this game feel given the divisional implications and that you don't want to lose your home game to the Bills?
"Every game to us is important. Every game is important, but I think guys that are in the locker room, guys are in the right frame of mind. Guys are ready to play this game and there's just been a lot of guys that have been here for their off days – not just getting work in, but talking to each other, communicating things that we could get better with. And then going into this week, talking personnel, talking 'Hey, this guy does this really well, maybe this, that or whatever.' There's just been a lot of guys up here in the building the past day or so since we've played. So I think that's a good thing for us."
Q: How much is it in your mind as a player when you know that another team has beaten you so often and has had so much success? Does that eat away at you? Is that something you think about as you prep for that team knowing the success they've had?
"That's going to be what's written out there until we do something about that. That's going to be the narrative, that we can't beat the Bills. And until we do beat them, and we beat them consistently, none of that's going to change. And we have an opportunity to do that this year. We have an opportunity to do that this Thursday."
Q: A lot of the conversation after the game on Sunday was about halftime and your speech and the adjustments and how they were effective. I'm curious in your perspective how that experience and your guys' ability to overcome those adjustments can galvanize this team and make you better for it in the long run?
"I think halftime speeches are good. I don't think that that's necessarily something you need to do all of the time, not just coming from me but coming from any other leader on our team. We have a good enough team to be able to just start fast, start the way we want to. It doesn't have to get to that point for any of us, and we got to hold each other to the standard that we said we wanted to, that's all that was."
Q: Thursday turnaround is always quick for you guys as players, is it a little easier because it's only Week 2 and you've only had one week worth of hits collectively as a team?
"Well, speaking for myself, it's not as bad, but I'm not the one that goes out there and carries the ball and has to hit guys or has go and tackle guys or has to force blocks this way or the other. So for me, my body doesn't feel as bad in comparison to guys that have to tackle people or guys that have to go and hit guys. So in respect to them, I would say I'd let them answer that question for themselves, not me."
Q: Do you have to change a few things up knowing that Mike White is on the other side now?
"No."
Q: You don't have to? Explain it to me, why don't you have to?
"Why would we have to?"
Q: In terms of the signals and the words?
"Well, we don't really signal. The words, he's not in our huddle with us listening. And with all due respect, they can understand all the concepts we're running, but are we running that concept on that play with what they're trying to do? That's just the whole game. We both got to go out and play, whether we know their signals, whether we know what they got going on and vice versa, at the end of the day, we both got to go out there and we got to go play."
Q: We saw the body camera footage from the traffic stop with WR Tyreek Hill. I'm curious, have you seen it and if so, what was going on through your mind watching it, seeing a teammate in that situation?
"Yeah, I've seen it. For me just seeing it the first time, it was a little emotional for me, hearing Tyreek's voice in the footage, just knowing Tyreek. For me, a lot of the instances that I see are of people that I don't know and it's happening to those people, so for it to have happened to somebody that I knew, and then hearing Tyreek's voice throughout that – and we talked about it, it was a little emotional. I don't know exactly how I would have dealt with that in that situation, and I can't speak on something that I've never personally gone through myself. I've never been through any of that growing up in Hawaii, but he knows that he has my support. I would say just watching the film, in my opinion, I think it could have been deescalated another way. I don't think it was done the right way. There's a lot of things that I think could have been done different, but I know Tyreek has gathered a group of us together to do something, to help change some things. He's come up with a couple ideas and we've gathered to talk about what we wanted to do. Obviously, we're going to worry about this week, but next week we'll get back together and we'll talk about how we can do something to change what is going on. I mean, it's right in our backyard, that's just what it was. For him to have stayed in that mindset to be able to still have came to the game, still play through all of that and did what he did – just think of that. What – 15-20 minutes before he came to the stadium, he just had gone through all of that. And mentally, physically what that does to you, he didn't blink. He came to the stadium and got everybody turnt, and you guys see what he did. He did what he did, and that's just Tyreek. But yeah, I'd definitely seen that, and it struck a lot of conversation for our locker room and a lot of us."
Q: What were some of those conversations like that you mentioned?
"I don't think I would want to share a lot of the conversations, but I thought there were some good conversations, and they weren't just conversations of us just siding with Tyreek. It was more so conversations of also understanding like how things could have been different, just all of that. So for a lot of us who haven't grown up with the police background being good to us growing up, or bad, like we don't know. So you only know what you know and it was cool. A lot of guys were sharing their upbringings about it and what not, so the more you know."
Q: How do you refocus after something like that? I mean, he was on CNN last night. You try not to make it be a distraction, but that's what we're asking about 48 hours before a game.
"Well I think the thing is we don't avoid the obvious – it's a thing, yeah. Let it be what it is, let it take its course. I think when we start to brush that away and think that this football thing is the most important thing to us when – this isn't just something that Tyreek had gone through, this is something that people in general go through. That's a life thing. Football, we're blessed to do this. We're blessed to be able to play this sport. We're blessed to make all this money to do what we love and it's for fun, but that's real life. No games in that, brother."
Q: Just going back to WR Tyreek Hill's mindset on Sunday; it kind of sounds like he didn't enter the locker room visibly affected by this or were you aware of just how bad his experience was when he got into the locker room on Sunday?
"So the thing is, I had no idea any of it happened. I was going about my routine, had no idea. And then a group of guys gathered around his locker and I'm just like, 'Hey, let me go say what's up to the guys. Let me go see what they're talking about,' and still had no idea, didn't know what they were talking about. It was just like 'All right,' let me go about my process. So I go inside one of the rooms and the TV is on and it ends up showing that Tyreek got detained, this, that and the other. So then I go up and ask him what happened, and he didn't seem fazed in the locker room. I think you guys get to talk to him, you guys ask him the questions, he'll be able to tell you his honest feelings and his honest truth about it."
Q: You had a couple of big-time throws in the last game. You spent some of the time in the offseason talking about wanting to refine your mechanics, the fluidity of your motion, the involvement of your hips. Does that all feel like it's in a nice place right now?
"Yeah, I would say it feels really good. Feels really good, just the timing with the guys that are out there on the field and allowing those guys opportunities to have big run catch and what not, but it feels good."
Q: Is there still any sour taste in your mouth from last year's regular season finale?
"Last year is last year brother. What a political answer. (laughter) Oh my gosh. Last year is last year brother. Worry about this year so we'll see what we got today, and we'll work it's way down to Thursday and see what we can do Thursday."
