Tua Tagovailoa’s health will likely play a large part in determining where he is picked in the upcoming NFL Draft. While Tagovailoa will look to show teams that he’ll be able to play in the coming months, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s pushing for immediate snaps. Tagovailoa’s agent wants to see his client start out as a backup quarterback.

“I will tell you that Patrick Mahomes (was) greatly helped … by the fact that he had a year to learn and he learned behind Alex Smith, and Alex Smith was a generous mentor,” Leigh Steinberg told the Detroit Free Press.

“It takes the right personality in the existing quarterback to bring along the next young quarterback, but if you look at Aaron Rodgers, Carson Palmer, Philip Rivers, none of them started the first year and my wish for Tua would be that he would go to a team that would give him a year to learn the system and do everything before the pressure of being a starting quarterback was upon him.”

Tagovailoa is still recovering from his season-ending injury and the surgery that followed. The Press report notes that he was walking with a limp while in Miami to do some media appearances, mingling and networking with all the Super Bowl festivities in town. Steinberg maintained that Tagovailoa will be able to work out and throw for teams before the draft in late April. While Tagovailoa’s 2020 status is being considered, the agent is reminding teams that they’re looking at drafting a franchise quarterback.

“You’re getting a franchise quarterback, and the hardest thing to find in football is a franchise quarterback, someone you can win because of rather than with. … I think Tua’s got that and people will start to look at him the way they originally looked at him, which is as the top quarterback in the draft.”