Tua Tagovailoa is gearing up for the 2023 season, hoping to put together a full campaign for the first time in his career.

Across his first 3 seasons in the league, Tagovailoa has never appeared in more than 13 games in a single year. He did go 8-5 with the Miami Dolphins last season and threw for more than 3,500 yards with 25 touchdowns in those games.

Heading into the season, Tagovailoa has tried to bulk up a bit, a move that drew negative comments about the quarterback’s physique from Ryan Clark. Tagovailoa was asked about those comments on Tuesday.

“He probably knows more about me than I know about me. I don’t know, Ryan’s been out of the league for some time,” said Tagovailoa. “I don’t know, it’s a little weird when other people are talking about other people when they’re not that person, it’s a little weird.

“My background is I come from a Samoan family, respect is everything but it gets to a point where ‘Hey, a little easy on that buddy,’ cause I think we’re a pretty tough-minded people and if we need to get scrappy, we can get scrappy too.”

Tagovailoa went on to say things always happen behind the scenes that others don’t know about and that adding weight wasn’t entirely up to him.

“I think we all worked hard through the offseason, and I’m not someone to talk about myself the entire time, but it takes a lot. You think I wanted to build all this muscle? Nah, to some extent I wanted to be a little lighter,” Tagovailoa explained. “There’s a mixture of things that people don’t know that people don’t know about that go behind the scenes. I’d appreciate it if you kept my name out your mouth, that’s what I’d say.”

(H/T Ari Meirov, Adam Beasley)