Tua Tagovailoa Not a Fan of Ryan Clark Comparing Him to Thick Stripper

ESPN NFL analyst Ryan Clark observed that there was more of Tua Tagovailoa to love during yesterday’s NFL Live.

“I’ll tell you what he wasn’t doing,” Clark said. “He wasn’t in the gym. I bet you that. He might have spent a lot of time at the tattoo parlor. He was not at the dinner table eating what the nutritionist had advised. He looks happy. He is thick. He’s built like a girl working at Onyx in Atlanta right now on the bottom.”

The joke played well to the roundtable and there was laughter that sounded like Dennis Nedry in Jurassic Park when he sees the shaving cream plan. It did not play well with the Dolphins fanbase, because well, they are quite a group.

Clark tweeted a few hours after the show that he actually said a lot of positive things about Tua and the Fins.

That could have been the end of it but the Dolphins quarterback was asked about the segment after practice today and responded with some strong words of his own.

“Ryan’s been out of the league for some time. It’s a little weird when people are talking about other people when they’re not that person. It’s just a little weird. I come from a Samoan family, like, respect is everything but you know it does get to a point where, hey, a little easy on that, buddy. I think we’re pretty tough-minded people and if we need to get scrappy we can get scrappy too. Just saying.”

Tagovailoa was then asked how hard he worked in the offseason.

“I think we all worked hard throughout 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? To some extent I wanted to be a little lighter. There’s mixture of things that people don’t understand that people don’t know about that are talked about that go behind the scenes. So I’d appreciate it if you kept my name out of your mouth.”

I think a few things can be true here. A lot of players have rabbit ears and can deal with fair criticism. And what Clark said was pretty out there because one simply does not hear players compared to curvy strippers on afternoon sports television too often.

Only a few hours until the next NFL Live. The sausage-making is circular.