Trent Dilfer spent hours scripting Tua Tagovailoa’s pre-draft workout

Improvise. Adapt. Overcome. Necessity can be the catalyst of innovation, and that’s precisely what retired Ravens quarterback and Super Bowl champion Trent Dilfer needed to prepare Tua Tagovailoa for his virtual Pro Day and beyond. “It took a lot of thought to create a glorified workout to show them the things they needed to see,” Dilfer …

Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.

Necessity can be the catalyst of innovation, and that’s precisely what retired Ravens quarterback and Super Bowl champion Trent Dilfer needed to prepare Tua Tagovailoa for his virtual Pro Day and beyond.

“It took a lot of thought to create a glorified workout to show them the things they needed to see,” Dilfer said. “I spent 10 hours trying to script this thing out.”

“Bro, this is like Rocky!” Tagovailoa said.

The former Crimson Tide quarterback was the frontrunner for the Heisman Trophy and a contender for the No. 1 overall pick entering the 2019 season. However, with the memory of a devastating injury on Nov. 17 as the lasting image etched in many minds, Dilfer knew they would have to overcome a lot to change the narrative long before the coronavirus outbreak brought the sports world to a standstill.

“I’m not playing badminton. I’m not on the swim team,” Tagovailoa said Friday night on Instagram live. “[Football] is a physical sport. You’re gonna get hurt. That just comes with it. And it was just very unfortunate that I got hurt every season.”

Hamstrung by social distancing regulations and relegated to a minuscule patch of indoor turf, Dilfer devised an innovative, 72-throw workout to showcase the 22-year-old’s abilities, which was later sent to all 32 teams.

“I didn’t want to create this thing where it was confusing to the scouts. I don’t care about the public, who sees it in the public. I couldn’t care less about that,” Dilfer said. “It was built for the 32 teams. I wanted those 32 GMs, owners, coaches, scouts, to have it make sense — Why are they doing that?”

“I thought it went pretty good, given the circumstances,” Tagovailoa said. “We only had so much of the field to work with. … We did it all under the precaution of the 10-people limit.”

The once-blue chip player is expected to go as high as No. 2 overall behind Heisman Trophy-winner Joe Burrow, or could fall outside the top five, depending how things shake out in this month’s draft. A number of teams are rumored to have discussed transactions to secure quarterbacks, and as perhaps the biggest draft-day domino, his position carries huge downstream implications.

“It would be irresponsible to take him in the top 10,” former Dolphins and Jets executive Mike Tannenbaum told the South Florida Sun Sentinel last week.

Wild-card draft prospects like Tagovailoa are affected disproportionately by the stoppage of sports. In his case, the impact is tripartite: 1) After opting not to participate at this year’s combine, teams were unable to assess his post-injury progress and long-term durability in-person, 2) He will have less time to train and learn a team’s system given the low likelihood sports will resume soon, and 3) The intangible, psychological toll of coronavirus could temper some teams’ appetites for risk.

“His health is just fine,” agent Leigh Steinberg told The Associated Press. “There’s two doctors that have seen him, Dr. Lyle Cain (Alabama’s orthopedic surgeon), and Dr. Chip Routt, who performed the surgery. Both have said that he is healthy and he’ll be lively and ready to go for training camp and the likelihood of recurrence is very low.”

Tagovailoa’s physical and mental tenacity in the face of adversity is demonstrative of qualities many coaches and general managers value, which could offset at least some of the risk.

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