Dave Hyde: Take a moment to see Dolphins’ Tua as the middle-class kid who achieved the American Dream

MIAMI GARDENS — Tua Tagovailoa entered the room Sunday and immediately thanked the Miami Dolphins and Jesus, because he still considers himself a middle-class kid at heart with the instilled values of his family.

So, he didn’t forget his manners or his place on the day he talked about becoming the richest Dolphins player and the fourth-highest-paid NFL quarterback ever.

“I want to thank Mike McDaniel,” he said next, going down the line of Dolphins coaches and executives who came with his wife and two young children to enjoy the moment

And so for this moment, set aside the debate if his four-year, $212 million contact extension matches his talent, ignore the salary-cap implications and file away the demands on him that come with such a contract.

For just this moment, consider this middle-class kid realizing the American Dream, if there is such a thing anymore, considering no one spends much time talking about it. It’s one heckuva story when you allow yourself to see it through this prism — and only this one.

Tagovailoa, you see, is as American as we get right down to what was expected of him by his father. Like working. He didn’t have side jobs as a kid cutting grass or in construction like another Dolphins quarterback from another generation who realized the American Dream in Dan Marino.

“This is my job,” Tagovailoa said of being a quarterback. “This is my only job. I never had a ‘real’ job.”

We may have never paid proper attention to how he grew up to reach this stage considering he’s been on it since his freshman year at Alabama. But he is the son of Samoan parents who had a healthy sense of old-fashioned values in raising their children.

“I grew up in a middle-class family,” he said. “My dad was the only one that worked and my mom took care of the kids. And so my dad did whatever it took to take care of our family and I’m just very, very blessed and very fortunate that I’ve been able to use football as my career path to help my family generationally with the kind of money that I’ve been given.”

He remembers coming home from school and immediately doing homework as a youth, because when dad came home the football practice began.

“Like your mind better be ready to go, to go and practice,” he said. “And when you practice, you had to practice a certain way. And if it wasn’t to his standard, then it, it was like, ‘OK, I know, I’m going to have to do extra work.’ Or if I didn’t have to do extra work, we were going to have a talk, that’s for sure.”

If young Tua didn’t play to his talent in a game, he’d stay in pads and be driven immediately to a, “throwing camp,” as he called it.

“I wouldn’t be with the kids the same age as me,” he said. “I’d be with the kids older than me. So I was kind of nervous. I’m nervous to go with the older guys because if I throw and I don’t throw it right, the older guys are going to say something and my mind is like, ‘OK, I want to fit in with these older guys.’

“But then at the same time, I’m like, ‘I don’t know if I want to go through all that stress. Maybe I should just stick with the younger guys.’ And so one thing I didn’t want my dad to do, was my dad to come down and force me to go and throw with those guys or tell whatever coach who was there, like, ‘No, my son’s going to go throw with these older guys.’

“So I was just more afraid of the standard that that was set for me by my dad, but it’s helped me become who I am today with how I see the game and I’m grateful for that part that my dad has helped me with.”

Now, all these years later, he’s reached part of his big dream. The money matters, even if a wide-body contract has never enabled a player to buy the other part of the dream. There’s plenty of time to talk about that winning part on another day.

For this moment, consider the achievement of the middle-class kid who just signed a life-changing deal, just as he was Sunday in saying, “We don’t need that much money, but to have that much money to be able to take care of my family and then, you know, my kids’ kids and their kids’ kids — having that is very, very important. It’s very, very special. And I think anyone here that would be in this position would say the same exact thing and be very grateful.”