A left-handed quarterback hasn’t started in the NFL since 2015.
When Tua Tagovailoa signed his rookie contract with the Miami Dolphins, the left-handed quarterback from Alabama didn’t have to worry about smudging his signature.
He signed the documents with his right hand.
Yes, the NFL’s latest lefty QB is a natural right-hander, one whose father, Galu, turned him into a (sometimes) southpaw in his youth.
“My dad was the only lefty in our family and he wanted me to be a lefty as well, so he switched the way I threw,” explained Tagovailoa, who still eats, writes and golfs right-handed but shoots baskets and throws footballs with his left.
“I don’t think I would be here if I was a righty,” said Tagovailoa. “Because I know I’m only good with my left hand throwing the ball.”
That makes Tagovailoa an oddity in the NFL, where a left-hander hasn’t started at quarterback since 2015, when Dallas’ Kellen Moore threw for 435 yards in a Week 17 loss to Washington.
Since then, 116 quarterbacks have thrown a pass in the NFL, and all of them were right-handed.
The last lefty to throw a TD pass wasn’t even a quarterback but a wide receiver: the Cowboys’ Dez Bryant threw a 25-yard strike to Jason Witten in 2016 against Detroit.
Fewer than three dozen southpaws have played quarterback in the NFL’s 100-year history, something that irks Steve Young, the most decorated left-handed QB and the first to reach the Hall of Fame, 11 years before Ken Stabler’s posthumous induction in 2016.
“There’s something wrong from a statistical standpoint,” Young said, noting that with 10% of the general population being left-handed, every year there should be a half-dozen lefties among the league’s 64 or so quarterbacks.
“And we’ve never been 10%,” Young said. “I can never remember six of us at one time. It was Boomer Esiason, myself, Mark Brunell, Jim Zorn early on. I can think of four or five, never six at one time, ever. Later on, Michael Vick.”
Now, lefties are lucky there’s even one of them.
“I will never say a kid is left-handed so he can’t play in the National Football League,” Steelers GM Colbert said. “That would be a naive statement. That would never concern us whatsoever.
