MIAMI — There are two ways to view the Miami Dolphins' current quarterback situation.
There's the narrow right-now view.
There's also the panoramic view that captures the past, present and future.
And the Miami Dolphins better see their situation with rookie Tua Tagovailoa as their starter and veteran Ryan Fitzpatrick as their oft-used relief pitcher through both lenses.
Or we're in for some trouble.
It's clear coach Brian Flores sees Miami's quarterback dynamic through the narrow lens. His job's top priority is to win football games now, so he's going to do anything and everything he must to get that dub no matter who he has to start or bench, or lift up or push down.
Winning is rightly the thing for Flores. On game days it's the only thing.
So if Tagovailoa is struggling through three quarters, but the game is close and Flores sees an opportunity to win by benching him and inserting Fitzpatrick, he's going to do it.
And the coach's done exactly that in two of the last five games Tagovailoa has started no matter what anyone calls it.
"I don't want to put any labels on it, the label is we're going to do what we have to do to win," Flores said Sunday afternoon. "I owe that to the Dolphins fans, the players in that locker room, the people in this organization. So that's what we're going to always do.
"Two-person, three-person, five-person quarterback, whatever we have to do to try to win, that's what we're going to do, so ..."
You can't really argue with Flores on his vision of things because, hey, the Dolphins won Saturday night using this strategy.
The team scored an improbable victory mostly because Flores went to Fitzpatrick with nine minutes left in the game and asked the veteran to rescue the team from defeat. And Fitzpatrick did it, throwing for 182 yards and a touchdown.
Fitzpatrick did it by completing a 59-yard pass to Mack Hollins with mere seconds to play, even as his facemask was being yanked and his helmet was almost covering his eyes as he threw. The pass and 15-yard penalty put the Dolphins in position to kick the game-winning field goal.
It was amazing.
It was also fair to believe the Dolphins would have lost if Flores hadn't benched Tagovailoa, because the offense he led through three quarters was mostly stagnant, with five three-and-outs in seven possessions.
Tagovailoa passed for only 94 yards on 22 attempts — a paltry 4.2 yards per attempt — while Fitzpatrick averaged a whopping 14 yards per attempt.
So narrow view, the benching was awesome. It accomplished its purpose.
And all is well because the Dolphins are 10-5 today and today is all that matters.
But there's another view of this situation. And it's sober and serious and equally as important as the Flores win-the-day at all costs view.
And it's the view the Dolphins personnel department must share if it doesn't avert its eyes because it involves the future success of the franchise. And here are considerations that must be weighed from that view:
The Dolphins might have picked the inferior quarterback when they passed on Justin Herbert and selected Tagovailoa at No. 5 overall in the last draft.
Granted, that cannot be said unequivocally. Because no reasonable person would make that call definitively before Tagovailoa and Herbert are even out of their rookie seasons.
But, likewise, no reasonable person would watch the two rookies play this season and not conclude that, so far, Herbert is the better player.
The Miami personnel department must consider this possibility because it suggests they've made a mistake and to correct or adjust from such a mistake the first step is to recognize it rather than deny it.
There's more: It's undeniable the Tagovailoa benchings (plural) could come with repercussions that may not be a concern when a game's outcome is at stake but could be a concern in the future.
Because the benching says the coaching staff has limited faith in Tagovailoa — certainly not enough to keep him in the game and believe he can recover and author a comeback.
And that being clear, somebody has to make it clear to Flores that while he's racking up a win today, he also might be affecting his chances of winning games down the road because his young quarterback might start playing as if looking over his shoulder.
Playing tentative or outside himself in the shadow of getting the hook again.
This is not a media fabrication, by the way.
No less an accomplished coach than Baltimore's John Harbaugh faced a difficult moment in the 2018 postseason when rookie Lamar Jackson was ineffective against the Los Angeles Chargers through three quarters of a playoff game.
And even as past starter Joe Flacco was strapping on his helmet and begging the coach to let him rescue the team, Harbaugh lived through the struggle, and the loss, but he would not yank Jackson.
Because Harbaugh wanted the young quarterback, and everyone, to never doubt, as he said later that, "Lamar is our quarterback."
Maybe the Dolphins organization feels the same way about Tagovailoa. Flores speaks as though that's the case even if what he says on the matter hasn't necessarily lined up with what he's done.
"I mean, Tua's brought us a spark in a lot of other games," he said. "People just forget that because we have the ... we just remember the last thing. So, I think Tua's played well. He's made a lot of improvement over the course of the season.
"I think he's developing. We don't or I don't make judgments and decisions based off of one instance. There's a lot that goes into the decisions we make. The conversations are not just [about] one game or one quarter. So Tua's done a lot of good things for this team. He knows that, this team knows that.
"I think he's played fairly well..."
