A Hip Injury Has Likely Ended Tua Tagovailoa’s Masterful Alabama Career
Though the long-term severity of the quarterback’s hip dislocation and fracture is still unknown, it’s hard not to wonder if we’ll ever see the Heisman contender and presumptive no. 1 NFL draft pick at full strength again
Alabama quarterback and Heisman hopeful Tua Tagovailoa’s season, and most likely his college career, ended on Saturday, when he suffered a dislocated hip and a fractured acetabular posterior wall while taking a hit late in the second quarter against Mississippi State.
On third-and-4, up 35-7 with just over three minutes remaining in the first half, Tagovailoa attempted to escape pressure, and was hit while throwing the ball away. His nose bled, and he was unable to put weight on his right leg, needing help to stand. Tagovailoa had just returned last week against LSU after suffering an ankle injury against Tennessee in mid-October that required surgery. On Saturday, he reportedly screamed in pain as trainers lifted him onto a medical cart. The junior quarterback was clearly in distress, and kept his hand on his upper right leg as he was driven from the field.
Alabama coach Nick Saban denied reports that Tagovailoa had lobbied to play one last series before taking his spot on the pine. Though backup Mac Jones was warming up on the sidelines, Saban said he wanted Tagovailoa to run the two-minute drill for practice. Some fans immediately decried Saban’s decision to keep his recently injured superstar on the field for a meaningless possession in a blowout.
“We can second-guess ourselves all we want,” Saban told ESPN. “We told Mac to warm up. We were going to go two-minute before the half, and Tua wanted to go in the game.”
Tagovailoa was taken from the stadium in an ambulance, and then airlifted from Starkville, Mississippi, back to St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Birmingham, Alabama, where he underwent MRI and CAT scans. In late October, surgeons performed a tightrope procedure on Tagovailoa’s right ankle, drilling holes from his fibula to his tibia before threading a suture through and cinching the bones together. He’d previously undergone the procedure on his left ankle following the 2018 SEC Championship game.
Tagovailoa was a recruiting darling, the top-ranked dual-threat quarterback in his class. But he wasn’t known widely until the 2017 season’s national championship game. Since his formal introduction to the bulk of the college football world, Tagovailoa has trained us to expect an almost supernatural ability to bounce back from misfortune. After seeing little from starter Jalen Hurts in the first half of that game, Saban handed Tua the baton. He inherited a 13-point deficit to start the second half, and nearly led the Tide to a victory in regulation. On Alabama’s first play of overtime, down three and having just seen their kicker miss a 36-yarder at the end of regulation that was equal parts heartbreaking and expected, Tagovailoa took a sack that drove the Tide well out of field goal range. On the very next play, he found his favorite target, DeVonta Smith, for a 41-yard, title-winning touchdown.
Tagovailoa’s 2018 campaign was one of the best in college football history, but ended with heartbreak: first when he saw his Heisman chances evaporate after sitting the end of the SEC championship game with injury, and then after he suffered the first loss of his career, and the worst of Saban’s in that season’s title bout against Clemson. Tagovailoa rebounded, starting the first six games of the 2019 campaign nearly without flaw. In each of those contests, he accounted for at least four touchdowns, and averaged 335 yards per game through the air. In all, he had 27 touchdowns and just one interception. He threw for 418 yards with four touchdowns against LSU, ostensibly on one leg, just three weeks after undergoing ankle surgery, and was the reason the Tide had a fighting chance to win a game in which they’d been thoroughly outmatched.
In the past 12 months, Tagovailoa has had surgery on both of his ankles. He’s now dislocated and fractured his hip. Until reports emerged that his most recent injury was season-ending, and despite its immediately understood severity, it was hard not to imagine a late-season return might be possible. He played hobbled last season against Clemson, and looked uncomfortable often this fall. Under the NCAA’s outdated and exploitative amateurism rules, and despite what his play earned his institution financially and in plaudits, he did so without fair compensation, and now, depending on how effectively he recovers after the most serious injury of his career, he may never earn what his pure talent dictates he should.
Assuming he still declares for April’s NFL draft, Tagovailoa won’t take another college snap, yet there’s still a strong argument to be made that he’s the greatest passer in college football history. Nick Saban’s Alabama teams typically aren’t known for throwing the ball; the only two running backs to win the Heisman trophy since Reggie Bush won his now-stripped trophy in 2005 were both Crimson Tide runners. Before Tagovailoa, Alabama quarterbacks were talented game managers whose jobs were to limit turnovers, and allow the physicality of Saban’s all-world linemen and defense to suffocate opposing teams. Greg McElroy, A.J. McCarron, and Jalen Hurts (now at Oklahoma, where in a new offense he’s showing he was capable of more) all fit that archetype. Tagovailoa was so good, so fast, that he forced an immensely successful, notoriously stubborn coach to fundamentally alter the way he ran his team.
Saban famously decried the fast-paced, no-huddle, vertical offenses that began sweeping college football in the beginning of the decade. “Is this what we want football to be?” he asked in 2012. “That’s when guys have a much greater chance of getting hurt when they’re not ready to play.” Seven years later, his offense is one of the most effective in the country because it embraced the techniques he once hated. It now also lost its engine.
In 2018, his first full season under center, Tagovailoa carried the pressure of following up one of the great moments in college football history, and responded by posting the single most efficient passing season on record. Through 31 games (and 24 starts), Tagovailoa sits third all time in passing yardage in Alabama history, is first in passing scores by 10 touchdowns over his next-closest competitor, and has lost only twice. He finished second in Heisman voting last year, and was a shoo-in to return as a finalist after this season. His career passer rating is more than 20 points higher than the current NCAA record holder, Sam Bradford. His career completion percentage of 69.2 percent places him eighth all time, and no player over the past two seasons has completed more passes of 20 yards or more than his 119. He wasn’t just one of college football’s most aggressive passers, he was one of its most accurate.
In the immediate aftermath of Tagovailoa’s injury, many compared it to the hip fracture and dislocation that, coupled with avascular necrosis, ended Bo Jackson’s career. Before he was a professional star, like Tagovailoa projects to be, Jackson was similarly college football royalty. He elicited obsession from fans and pundits alike because of his two-sport superstardom. Despite only cutting his teeth on the gridiron, Tagovailoa was the rare athlete capable of approaching his level of public adoration. Since the start of last season, scouts have projected Tagovailoa as the presumptive top pick in next April’s NFL draft, and rated him as the best passing prospect since Andrew Luck—who on the eve of this NFL season retired early after a series of debilitating injuries.
The long-term severity of Tagovailoa’s injury is still unknown, and nothing reported thus far suggests he won’t be able to make a full recovery. But it’s hard not to wonder if we’ll ever see him at full strength again. At his best, Tua is unobjectionable; there isn’t a good-faith argument to make against his talent, and his ceiling never seems to stop rising. The fear now is that his body won’t ever let him reach it.