- Tagovailoa, who played college ball in sunny Alabama, is not used to this kind of weather
- But the quarterback says he has no plans to wear gloves to combat the cold
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Hawaii-born Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa has no plans to wear gloves against the Chiefs this weekend — despite forecast temperatures of -5 in Kansas City.
Miami is set to make the trip to Arrowhead on Saturday for the Wild Card Round playoff against the Super Bowl champions, but weather forecasts suggest the odds could be against them.
Temperatures potentially dropping to -5 Fahrenheit will be a major problem for a South Florida team that has never played in anything below 10, as well as for a rookie quarterback from the tropical climate of Hawaii who played his college ball in Sunny Alabama.
“I think maybe 20 (degrees)?” Tagovailoa mentioned the coldest temperature he has ever seen ahead of this weekend’s frigid playoff game.
‘Or something lower than 20? Nothing lower than I would say: 15. So probably in between.”
Hawaii-born Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa has no plans to compete against the Chiefs this weekend in -5 temperatures
Temperatures are expected to drop to -5 during this weekend’s playoff game in Arrowhead
Tagovailoa is winless in four games under 45 degrees and that could pose a problem for Miami
Tagovailoa, who is gearing up for his first-ever postseason game after missing last year’s playoff campaign with the Dolphins due to injury, is well aware that the pregame will be extremely important as a warm-up for one of the biggest games of his career.
“I think it’s just a feeling of how everything is,” he continued. “How the ball feels, how throwing it feels, how holding the ball feels, if there’s wind, if there’s no wind, you have to take all those things into account,” he said.
“But we’ll go there, we’ll test it and see what we need to do in terms of adjustments or not.”
During an episode of the fly-on-the-wall series Hard Knocks that recently chronicled the Dolphins, Tagovailoa received Isotoner gloves as a Christmas gift from Dan Marino, the former Miami quarterback who now works as a special advisor to the franchise.
However, the 25-year-old says he won’t be wearing gloves despite the freezing temperatures at Arrowhead.
“Probably not Isotoner gloves, but I’ll see what we can wear during the game,” he added. ‘You can’t prepare for a match like this in this kind of weather, so it will be new.
‘I’ll just see how it feels without gloves. I just think it’s all a mentality.”
The Dolphins have dropped 10 straight games by an average of 17 points while playing in temperatures below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, which seems almost tropical compared to what they’ll see Saturday night.
But Tagovailoa doesn’t plan to wear gloves, saying playing in cold weather is “just a mentality.”
As for Tagovailoa, the Miami quarterback is winless in four games when the temperature is 45 degrees or below.
The Chiefs, meanwhile, have lost just once in their past 10 home games when the temperature was 40 degrees or colder, including a 4-0 mark in playoff games.
And even though quarterback Patrick Mahomes grew up mostly in Texas, and never played in a truly cold game until he arrived in Kansas City, the league’s reigning MVP has grown quite fond of them.
The coldest Chiefs game ever was on January 7, 1996, when it was 11 degrees at the start against the Colts. But the second coldest came just four years ago, when Mahomes threw for 294 yards and three touchdowns without an interception as the Chiefs rolled to a 35-24 win over Tennessee in the AFC championship game.