Tyreek Hill, Tua Tagovailoa take aim at Julio Jones

In the Atlanta Falcons’ 10th game of the 2015 season, wide receiver Julio Jones caught nine passes for 160 yards in a 24-21 loss to the Indianapolis Colts. The former Foley High School and Alabama standout’s output gave him 1,189 receiving yards for 2015, the most in the first 10 games of a season before or since in the NFL’s Super Bowl era.

Miami wide receiver Tyreek Hill needs 86 receiving yards in the Dolphins’ game against the Cleveland Browns on Sunday to surpass Jones’ feat.

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In 2015, Miami coach Mike McDaniel worked as an offensive assistant with the Falcons. Even though Jones is 6-foot-3 and 220 pounds and Hill is 5-10 and 185 pounds, the first-year head coach on Wednesday invoked Jones while detailing when he realized Hill had a special quality.

“There was a particular route that I think we came up with in 2013,” McDaniel said. “Trivia fact: It was Leonard Hankerson against the Chargers. That’s a deeper outbreaking route that not all that many people can run because of the timing of the play and to push it that deep, you don’t always have protection for it. So I’ve been running that — it kind of got steam and ran it the most when we had Julio Jones, who was unbelievable at the route.

“And then seeing Tyreek in, I think it was probably OTA 4, if my training camp install schedule is correct in my brain, when he ran that. I just had a lot of deliberate reps at viewing that ran at an exceptional speed, depth, intent, and it was like, ‘Whoa.’ I’ve been fortunate to be around Andre Johnson in his prime, Julio Jones in his prime, Josh Gordon, Pierre Garcon leading the league in receiving. All these great, great players, and he is different. We knew then in OTAs that, yeah, this is a different deal.”

A former West Alabama standout, Hill has 1,104 yards and three touchdowns on 76 receptions in 2022, reaching 1,100 receiving yards before any other player has reached 900 despite working with three quarterbacks this season.

Former Alabama All-American Tua Tagovailoa went down with a concussion in the first half of Miami’s fourth game and missed the next two contests.

The Dolphins rank second in the NFL in passing offense this season at 293.5 yards per game. The Kansas City Chiefs lead at 311.3. In Tagovailoa’s six full games, Miami has averaged 311.7 passing yards per game and posted a 6-0 record.

“I mean, I would say the biggest thing that I’ve noticed with him that he carries with him every time on and off the field is his competitiveness,” Tagovailoa said about Hill. “Always competitive. He’s competitive in everything he does. I would say he’s a great teammate. He’s a great teammate for everyone on the team. I think a lot of people from the outside looking in can see that.”

Tagovailoa has the NFL’s best passing-efficiency rating in 2022 at 115.9. He has averaged 9.2 yards per pass and 6.9 percent of his passes have produced touchdowns – both the best marks in the league this season. Last season, those numbers were 6.8 yards and 4.1 percent for Tagovailoa.

“I think Coach Mike does a great job putting us in great situations offensively,” Tagovailoa said. “He has a lot of, people would say, window dressing. He doesn’t like that term because it’s just a part of our offense with the movement, shifting, motioning. It’s a part of what we do. So I think it’s a lot of credit to what our head coach has done within installs and things like that to help put us in those situations.

“We can say that I go out there and throw, Tyreek and (Jaylen) Waddle and all these other guys catch and run. He continues to give other people praise, but he doesn’t get as much praise as I think he should, and a lot of that is because of him.”

While Hill leads the NFL in receiving yards, Waddle ranks fifth.

“If one gets doubled, we’re looking for the other,” Tagovailoa said of his wide receivers, “and if that one is doubled, as well, if they double both of them, then we’ve got to find the next guy. They both complement each other, but they also both complement everyone else on our offense.”

Another former Alabama standout, Waddle set an NFL rookie record with 104 receptions last season. In 2021, Waddle averaged 9.8 yards per reception. In 2022, Waddle has averaged 17.3 yards on 47 receptions, the best in the NFL for any player with more than 20 catches.

“I feel like a guy like Jaylen Waddle doesn’t get enough credit for what he truly does, kind of similar like me early on in my career,” Hill said. “So just to see him succeed and just to see guys like Tua succeeding in this league and just the whole offensive line doing their thing, man, it makes me smile. I’m just happy to be able to witness it all.”

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Hill has been a Tagovailoa booster since the Dolphins acquired the wide receiver from the Kansas City Chiefs on March 24.

“Unfortunately, Tua, he came into a difficult situation,” Hill said. “Obviously, two years down the road, he got ‘J-Dub,’ which is Jaylen Waddle, to help him out a little bit. But some guys don’t come into great situations, so I feel like once he got a coach who truly believed in who he is as a person, who he is as a player, this organization got around him — look at the talent now he’s got around him.

“A lot of people can begin to grab their chairs. We’ve got enough room at the table, man, so media people, I’m saying this to y’all: Y’all can apologize now.”

Over the final seven games of the 2015 season, Jones caught 56 passes for 842 yards to finish with 1,871 receiving yards. At the time, that ranked as the second-most in one season in NFL history, behind the 1,964 compiled by Detroit Lions wide receiver Calvin Johnson in 2012.

In 2021, Los Angeles Rams wide receiver Cooper Kupp had 1,947 yards in the first season of the NFL’s 17-game schedule.

“My job each and every week is just to focus on the next game, so I can’t look forward,” Hill said. “As bad as I want to sit here and say, ‘Hey, I want to break the record,’ that would be real selfish of me. I know my job as one of the leaders on this team is just to make sure we’re doing the right thing and I’m also doing the right thing, and that’s focusing on the next week, which is the Cleveland Browns and just hoping we go out and just be victorious.”

The Dolphins and Browns square off at noon CST Sunday at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida.

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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.

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