Injured Dolphins WR Tyreek Hill praises QB Tua Tagovailoa, calling him 'a great leader'

C. Isaiah Smalls II, Miami Herald on Oct 23, 2025

Published in Football

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MIAMI — Tua Tagovailoa has had a rough couple of weeks.

He created a media firestorm after calling out his teammates’ lateness to player-led meetings. He has thrown six interceptions in two games. And, most recently, he got benched during the Miami Dolphins’ 31-6 lopsided loss to the Cleveland Browns.

Despite the criticism that Tagovailoa has endured this season, he still has one supporter: Tyreek Hill.

“Tua is a great leader,” the star receiver said during Thursday’s episode of “The Set,” a YouTube show hosted by Terron Armstead. “He’s passionate about Miami. He loves the community. And he wants to win games in Miami.”

Although Hill could recognize why the media took the opportunity to pounce on his franchise quarterback after he publicly called out his teammates, he added that it showed Tagovailoa’s commitment to winning.

“I kind of can feel what he’s saying because at the end of the day, that should show people that he wants to win,” Hill continued.

Hill’s perspective here matters because he too has been on the receiving end of one of Tagovailoa’s public call-outs. During the early days of training camp, the signal caller admitted that his relationship with the star receiver still needed some work after Hill essentially asked to be traded after the Dolphins’ 32-20 loss to the New York Jets in the 2024 season finale.

“We’re still continuing” to rebuild it, Tagovailoa said in late July. “But it’s not just with me — it’s with a lot of the guys. I’m not the only one who heard that. You guys aren’t the only people that heard that.”

Added Tagovailoa: “When you say something like that, you don’t just come back from that with ‘Hey my bad.’ You got to work that relationship up. You got to build everything up again. It’s still a work in process.”

When Hill reflected on that moment with Armstead, he couldn’t help but commend Tagovailoa.

“He made me better from that,” Hill said. “Nobody wants to be the odd guy out in the locker room, and that instilled fire inside of me. That put a new spark inside of me like ‘I got to come to work every day, I got to show up on time and I got to show these guys that I’m still one of these ones.”