In what turned out to be his final game as Alabama’s quarterback, Tua Tagovailoa sustained a dislocated hip and posterior wall fracture against SEC rival Mississippi State on Nov. 16, 2019.

A hip injury kept Tagovailoa from lining up at QB for Miami on Sunday in a game the Dolphins had to win to stay in the NFL playoff race.

On Monday, Miami coach Mike McDaniel said the first question he asked when he learned of Tagovailoa’s latest injury was if it was related to his college injury.

“They’re unrelated,” McDaniel said, “and there’s no causation involved in it.”

Now the question is: Can Tagovailoa play on Sunday in the Dolphins’ regular-season finale against the New York Jets?

That game matters because Miami defeated the Cleveland Browns 20-3 on Sunday with Snoop Huntley at quarterback.

If the Dolphins beat the Jets and the Denver Broncos lose to the Kansas City Chiefs on the final Sunday of the regular season, Miami would claim the third wild-card spot in the AFC playoff field. Both games will kick off at 3:25 p.m. CST.

Tagovailoa didn’t make a big deal about his injury when he met with reporters on Thursday.

“I mean it’s good,” Tagovailoa said. “It’s just like anyone else on the team and anyone else around the league. You get banged up a little bit towards the ending of the year, so just got to take care of that.”

Tagovailoa sustained the hip injury during a 20-12 loss to the Houston Texans on Dec. 15 and aggravated the injury in a 29-17 victory over the San Francisco 49ers on Dec. 22. Tagovailoa took every offensive snap for the Dolphins in both games.

McDaniel said the injury did not heal as the Dolphins had hoped last week.

“Relative to a projected timeline based upon the previous week, I would say that it didn’t improve as we were kind of forecasting,” McDaniel said. “Not necessarily worse, just you’re expecting things to progress, and sometimes the body could care less about your expectations. It wasn’t like he took a shot or got hit in practice or anything like that. We just had some, I think, reasonable expectations based upon the week previous, and it didn’t really work out that way. …

“It was not safe at all (for Tagovailoa to play) based upon a litany of things that his body was vulnerable to as well as his inability to avoid and move within the pocket. The risk of just leaving him really unprotected is the way that I would say both on impact and the ability to avoid impact.”

This week, McDaniel said he would have Huntley better prepared to play if Tagovailoa is out again.

“This week, I know one thing: Snoop will get more reps than Tua this week as we go through the week and have to be prepared for both guys to play,” McDaniel said, “because I don’t really know exactly what it’s going to look like this next Sunday. So that’s really the optimism. We’re kind of in a gray area now because of just how his body did not cooperate with my agenda.”

McDaniel said Tagovailoa’s participation this week would be determined by the Dolphins’ medical staff. The decision to play would not be the quarterback’s. Otherwise, Tagovailoa would have been in the lineup against the Browns, McDaniel said.

“I think with injuries it’s pretty cut and dry,” McDaniel said. “One hundred times out of 100, if someone’s not medically cleared to play, I don’t trump card that. I suppose, on game day, I guess by the letter of the law you could say it’s my final say. My final say is to choose to listen to the medical professionals with their expertise and knowing the pros and cons, and that’s the only thing responsible to do with players.”

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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on X at @AMarkG1.