Tua Tagovailoa has left fans on the internet rather split after a statistic emerged about the Miami Dolphins quarterback’s performance last season.

When wide receiver Tyreek Hill joined the Miami Dolphins after his stint with the Kansas City Chiefs last year, there was something of a concern that he wouldn’t be as effective because quarterback Tua Tagovailoa wasn’t necessarily that good when throwing the ball deep, which would take away Hill’s greatest skill which is his speed.

Indeed when footage emerged last year at OTAs that Tagovailoa had underthrown Hill during a workout session, those who felt like the two couldn’t work together were probably feeling rather happy with themselves thinking they were going to be proved right.

However, the two seemed to get along pretty well last season, with Hill registering a career-high 1,710 yards (averaging more than 100 per game) and Tagovailoa also putting up a career-high for both passing yards and touchdowns. But as Around The NFL’s Nick Shook points out, there’s a lot more to the numbers.

Tua Tagovailoa sitting pretty near the top of the league

In an article for NFL.com, that looked at the ‘Next Gen stats’ for this past season, it showed that Tagovailoa was the second-best quarterback in the league when it came to throwing the ball deep, noting:

The first half of Tagovailoa's season sure was special. In Weeks 1-9, Tagovailoa completed 15-of-25 deep attempts for 480 yards, a 5:2 TD-to-INT ratio, a 110.4 passer rating, a 97 passing score and a CPOE of +14.7%. His EPA per deep-pass dropback was an eye-popping +1.27.

For context, and as the article notes, CPOE stands for “completion percentage above expectation”, which is the difference between a quarterback's actual completion percentage and expected completion percentage, controlling for the level of difficulty of each pass. EPA meanwhile stands for Expected Points Added which as per Covers.com is a metric that quantifies the number of expected points that a play adds (or loses).

The article later states:

This is where you're expecting me to tell you everything fell apart, given the additional time Tagovailoa missed with concussion issues and Miami's reduced output over a 3-5 stretch to finish the season. But the QB's numbers don't quite fit that narrative: It turns out his performance didn't vary significantly when comparing the two halves of 2022. The biggest difference in his deep-passing stats the rest of the way ended up being in CPOE, in which Tagovailoa dropped by more than eight percentage points. Otherwise, he posted a perfect 5:0 TD-to-INT ratio from Week 10 on. In other words, he was good -- really good -- at throwing deep throughout the season, finishing as the only qualifying quarterback in the entire NFL with a deep passing EPA per dropback over 1.

When NFL Gameday posted the graphic of the league’s top ten to their Twitter feed, it led to something of a fierce debate amongst a selection of NFL fans. There were some who thought this was a great look for the Dolphins man:

Tua Tagovailoa tweets 1

Whilst others didn’t seem as convinced by the metrics, thinking that there might have been some trickery with the numbers:

Tua Tagovailoa tweets 2

What about you? Where do you fall in this argument?