Tua Tagovailoa won’t be the first quarterback taken in the 2020 NFL Draft (Joe Burrow is very likely to get drafted by the Bengals No. 1 overall), and that’s good news for the Miami Dolphins. Miami has the fifth overall pick in this year’s NFL Draft, and Tagovailoa may still be on the board.

This past season, folks have connected Tagovailoa and the Dolphins with the catchy phrase “Tanking for Tua.” Miami traded away numerous players to collect draft picks, and it appeared as if they were acting out the slogan. In fact, the Dolphins have three first-round picks this April.

Miami general manager Chris Grier is attending Senior Bowl practices this week in Mobile, Alabama, and he was asked about tanking during his media availability.

“When people were talking about all that stuff, we said we were never tanking,” Grier told reporters, via the Dolphins website. “We were trying to win and build, and so to say one player was attached to us, you know, you can’t control what fans and people in the media say.

“There’s no pressure for us (to draft Tagovailoa),” Grier continued. “The pressure for us is to find the right guy that will be the quarterback for the Dolphins. Whether it’s him or someone else, it’s the pressure of finding the right guy to lead the organization.”

Miami would love to find its franchise quarterback in this draft, and despite Tagovailoa’s injury and surgery, he’s still a good enough prospect to take a big chance on early in the first round. However, Miami hasn’t even talked to the former Alabama quarterback yet.

“We’re still so early in this process,” the Miami general manager said. “We haven’t met him, haven’t sat down with him or talked to him. Our doctors haven’t seen him, so we know as much as you do right now. We see the media reports, things of that nature, but at the end of the day, we got to get to know the guys, get in front of them, just like any player, so we’re very, very early in the stage with the fact that we haven’t even met the guy yet.”

Grier, however, certainly sounds intrigued with Tagovailoa.

“He’s been a winner,” Grier said of the former Alabama QB. “I think the fact that we know he won the Elite 11 and goes to Alabama, has kind of a storybook coming-off-the-bench win in the national championship. Everyone always talks about his accuracy, etc. And they talk about the person as well, the intangibles that we talk about, so looking forward to getting to meet him just like a lot of players.”