Tua Tagovailoa of the Miami Dolphins and Jalen Hurts of the Philadelphia Eagles have started 40 NFL regular-season games apiece. In Game No. 41, the former Alabama teammates will square off as NFL quarterbacks for the first time on Sunday night.

But while Hurts and Tagovailoa have the same number of starts, they haven’t had parallel careers.

“There’s different ways to skin the cat, right?” Tagovailoa said on Wednesday. “Many different ways. He went down a different road than I did to get to where I’m at. And he had to go down a different road to get to where he’s at. But like I said, I got a lot of respect for him — who he is as a person, who he is as a player — and wish him the best of luck as we play him.”

The Dolphins and Eagles square off at 7:20 p.m. CDT Sunday at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. NBC will televise the game.

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Miami has the highest-scoring team in the NFL, and Tagovailoa leads the league in passing yards and touchdown passes.

Philadelphia has the same record as the Dolphins at 5-1, but a different vibe after falling to the New York Jets 20-14 last week. Hurts finished as the runner-up for the AP NFL MVP Award last season, when the Eagles went to the Super Bowl. But he’s coming off a three-interception game. Six games into 2022, Hurts has thrown two interceptions and had six the entire season. In 2023, he’s up to seven already.

Philadelphia coach Nick Sirianni expects Hurts to rebound strongly from the adversity – again.

One of Hurts’ setbacks along the way occurred at Alabama, and Tagovailoa was the obstacle.

Hurts won the SEC Offensive Player of the Year Award in 2016 as a freshman, when he led the Crimson Tide to the CFP national-championship game.

Alabama returned to the title game in 2017. But with the Tide trailing Georgia 13-0 at halftime, Alabama turned to Tagovailoa, who rallied the team to a 26-23 overtime victory. The next season, Hurts was Tagovailoa’s backup – a role reversal from the 2017 season.

While Hurts encountered adversity, he did not allow it to become animosity.

“I never had two players that were really, really good players at the same position who actually supported each other the way those two guys supported each other when they were here,” Alabama coach Nick Saban said on Wednesday. “… One guy went like 26-2 as a starter and got replaced by another guy for a whole year and supported him.”

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To Hurts, what happened to Alabama is one of the reasons he’s an all-star NFL quarterback.

“It’s a compound effect of not just those times at Alabama, but my whole career as far as a number of different experiences,” Hurts said this week, “and so there’s always an opportunity to learn from that, and I think I’ve just grown in wisdom and just kind of grown as a person throughout my whole entire career.”

In 2019, Hurts transferred to Oklahoma, finished as the runner-up for the Heisman Trophy and returned to the CFP playoffs. But when the Eagles chose Hurts in the second round of the 2020 NFL Draft – 48 picks after the Dolphins took Tagovailoa – the selection was widely reviled by Philly fans, who already had a quarterback to root for in Carson Wentz.

After 10 games as a gadget player, Hurts got his chance to run the offense at quarterback. Wentz got traded, the Eagles went from 4-11-1 in 2020 to a playoff team in 2021 to NFC champion in 2022.

“He’s just very steady in his mental makeup, focusing on the next play, the next play, the next game and constantly trying to get better,” Sirianni said of Hurts. “I think when you go through adversity, it’s common to think about what’s going to happen in the future. That’s in football; that’s in life. You’re focused on, all right, we’re going through a really hard time, what if, what if, what if, what if. And I think the mindset that Jalen has is to be locked in right where he is in the moment and handling the things that he can control. And I think that’s why you see a steadiness in him of who he is as a person and who he is as a player. …

“I think that’s why he has thrived after going through a difficult time is who he is as a person, what his work ethic is, his mindset of being locked in, his mindset of not being denied. And so there’s just so many things that speak to that.”

Tagovailoa has encountered his own adversity since unseating Hurts as Alabama’s No. 1 QB. In 2019, he sustained a dislocated hip and posterior wall fracture against Mississippi State to close his Crimson Tide career prematurely.

After choosing Tagovailoa at No. 5 in the 2020 NFL Draft, the Dolphins didn’t seem sold on him as a franchise quarterback, even though 2019 had been viewed as Miami’s Tanking for Tua season. When that changed with the arrival of coach Mike McDaniel in 2022, Tagovailoa went down twice with concussions.

This season, though, Tagovailoa is running an offense so productive that the yards-per-play gap between Miami and No. 2 Buffalo is greater than the average-gain gap between the Bills and the No. 32 NFL offense of the New York Giants.

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“Tua’s doing a really nice job of delivering the football and going to the right spot with the ball, making accurate throws,” Sirianni said, “and those are all things he showed coming out of college, and he’s continued to show and get better as a pro.”

The Eagles have a 28-12 record in Hurts’ NFL regular-season starts. The Dolphins have a 26-14 record in Tagovailoa’s starts.

In his 40 regular-season starts, Hurts has completed 781-of-1,238 passes for 9,306 yards with 50 touchdowns and 25 interceptions and run for 2,069 yards and 31 touchdowns on 413 carries.

In his 40 starts, Tagovailoa has completed 838-of-1,260 passes for 9,724 yards with 66 touchdowns and 28 interceptions and run for 328 yards and five touchdowns on 113 carries.

“It’s been great to see the things he’s been able to do over his career,” Hurts said. “Hope for continued success.”

But about contact with his friend before Sunday’s game, Hurts said: “Game week. I’m sure we’ll catch up after the game.”

Tagovailoa understands the mindset.

“I think in competition mode, it’s one of those things where I know where he’s at with his play, he knows where I’m at with my play,” Tagovailoa said. “We’ll probably see each other before the game to wish each other luck, but at the end of the day, we’re both trying to help our teams win. And I know that he’s doing all that he can to help his offense be successful against our defense, and I’m doing the exact same, trying to work hard to do the exact same to their defense. …

“I know it’ll be a good game, and I don’t think of it as a Super Bowl preview or anything like that. I just think that this is another team that we’re preparing for, and in order for us to get to where we want to go to, we’ve got to play this game.”

Could the quarterbacks provide insight on each other in preparation for Sunday night’s game?

Tagovailoa already has shared one thing. While the rest of the NFL is scratching its collective head over how the Eagles can get their Brotherly Shove quarterback sneak to work while the rest of the league struggles with the play, Tagovailoa knows why it works for Philadelphia.

“I’ve been (Hurts’) lifting partner when I got there to Alabama and oh my goodness,” Tagovailoa said. “Let me tell you, he could probably squat with our linemen or maybe just a little more. This guy can squat. He’s strong, so it doesn’t surprise me with the quarterback sneaks. And that’s not to diss any of our linemen. That’s just to say I’ve seen this dude put up a lot of weight.”

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