After missing five full games during the 2022 NFL season because of two concussions, Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa has an improved and league-approved helmet meant to address that issue.

At the Dolphins’ OTA practices, the former Alabama All-America also has had an extra accessory on his headgear: Tagovailoa has had a camera attached to his helmet.

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Miami coach Mike McDaniel addressed the usefulness of the device on Wednesday.

“That’s a tool that has been around in the league in different avenues in different organizations I can remember since the teens of the 2000s,” McDaniel said. “For us it’s multifaceted. It’s not like anything earth-shattering. It’s a camera, but it does have audio, and I think some of the strong attributes of that technology are that you get to hear play calls. You can library those play calls for players to hear when they’re studying.

“This just in: the National Football League huddles. A lot of college and high schools don’t, which means you’re taking in information auditorily for the first time with minimized reps as opposed to looking at the sidelines for a signal or a picture. So auditory, it’s a tool.

“It’s also something that you can see from his side eye what he’s looking at. For all quarterbacks, it’s a tool to help really drive home certain coaching points and just see what they’re seeing to be on the same page as the player.”

Miami is in the final portion of its offseason program, when teams are allowed to conduct 10 days of organized team practice activity, usually referred to as OTAs. No contact work is permitted during these practices, but teams can expand their offseason workouts to include 7-on-7, 9-on-7 and 11-on-11 drills.

The Dolphins had only six OTAs scheduled. After practicing three times last week, Miami was on the field on Tuesday and Wednesday and will hold its final OTA workout on Friday.

After holding their mandatory minicamp June 6-8, the Dolphins will break for the summer.

“I think that by and large, players, coaches, people in general, do best when ‘why’ is explained to them,” McDaniel said. “In this particular situation, I think that it is crucial that we have, as convicted, present, deliberate, football players when they’re approaching practice and really recognizing how each opportunity is very crucial to the development of the team. I think when you’re able to acknowledge players’ hard work and they get positively reinforced with actual action, I think it goes a long way. They are afforded the less practices because they’ve earned it because of the way they’ve approached the whole offseason.

“My standards for preparation are pretty high, and they have recognized that and really heeded to the expectation across the board. I think in those types of circumstances, everyone benefits with a little bone here or there.”

RELATED: TUA TAGOVAILOA ‘GOING ABOVE AND BEYOND’ WTH OFFSEASON WORK

Tagovailoa completed 259-of-400 passes for 3,548 yards with 25 touchdowns and eight interceptions last season. He had the NFL’s top passing-efficiency rating at 105.5 in 2022.

But two concussions affected his season – one sustained on Sept. 29 in a 27-15 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals and the other on Dec. 25 in a 26-20 loss to the Green Bay Packers.

For the first concussion, Tagovailoa was at University of Cincinnati Medical Center by halftime after being taken off the field on a stretcher. On the second, Tagovailoa played the entire game before entering the NFL concussion protocol the next day.

Tagovailoa remained at that status through the final two games of the regular season and the Dolphins’ 34-31 playoff loss to the Buffalo Bills.

This offseason, the NFL approved the VICIS Zero2 Matrix QB helmet for use in the 2023 season. The new helmet is designed to reduce the severity of the impact when a quarterback’s head hits the turf – the circumstance that caused both of Tagovailoa’s concussions.

The quarterback helmet is the second position-specific headwear introduced in the NFL, following an offensive lineman/defensive lineman model approved in 2021.

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