Life can be unfair sometimes. Just ask Ryan Fitzpatrick.

It's officially Tua Time in Miami, as this week, Ryan Fitzpatrick was benched for former Alabama quarterback and first round pick Tua Tagovailoa. This comes after back-to-back atrocious games for Fitzpatrick, where he threw six touchdown passes, completed over 72 percent of his passes, had an abysmal passer rating of 124.9, and led his team to two straight convincing victories. Obvious sarcasm aside, Fitzpatrick was benched after playing some of the best football of his entire career, and not even two weeks removed from a game against the 49ers where he had a near-perfect passer rating of 154.5.

This was always the plan in Miami. The plan was to have Fitzpatrick as the stopgap option until Tua was ready, and then to give him control of the franchise. And immediately, this situation drew parallels to what the New York Giants did in 2004, when they benched Kurt Warner midway through a season where they were 5-4 to let first round pick Eli Manning play. While it did not work out that season, as they finished with just one win in their final seven games to go 6-10, it obviously worked out long term, thanks to two Super Bowl victories.

But to say that this situation with the Dolphins is the same as what the Giants did in 2004 is completely missing the point. Even though these situations seem the same on the surface, the context behind these two situations is so different that you might as well be comparing apples and oranges. What the Giants did with Eli Manning and Kurt Warner made sense. What the Dolphins are doing with Ryan Fitzpatrick and Tua Tagovailoa has the makings of a recipe for disaster.

First, it’s important to look at just how well the veteran quarterbacks were playing at the time that they got benched. With Kurt Warner, the Giants were struggling. They had dropped two straight games, and had lost three of their last four games coming off of their bye week. Warner had thrown just six touchdown passes in his nine starts. In his final four starts, he was sacked 24 times. In his third-to-last start against the Vikings, he threw for just 144 yards. Against the Bears in his penultimate start, he had two interceptions and a passer rating of 52.4. And in his final start, which was a 17-14 loss against the Cardinals, the Giants scored a touchdown on their first two drives… and then failed to score on their final nine drives of the game. On their final nine drives, the Giants moved the ball just 123 yards, with five punts and two turnovers on downs in that stretch. Over the final month of Warner’s short yet memorable stint at the Meadowlands, the Giants had a struggling offense that could not get anything going.

Compare that to the Dolphins with Ryan Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick has thrown at least two touchdown passes in four of his last five games. In his last five games, he’s thrown 10 touchdowns while running for two, and has posted a passer rating of 104.5. Over the last two games, the Dolphins have outscored their opponents 67-17; while Fitzpatrick obviously has nothing to do with the 17, he has a lot to do with the 67, having thrown six touchdown passes in those games. Whereas the Giants benched Warner for Manning when their offense was sputtering, the Dolphins benched Fitzpatrick for Tagovailoa when their offense was playing some of their best football in forever.

The message behind the benching also makes more sense under Tom Coughlin than it does under Brian Flores. Coughlin had established credibility as a head coach during his time in Jacksonville. By the time he joined the Giants, he was an established coach in this league with a history of winning. He led the most successful expansion team in NFL history, taking the Jacksonville Jaguars to four postseason appearances in their first five years, two AFC Championships, and to within one game of making the Super Bowl in just their second season. When he got to the Giants, he took over a team that, the previous season under Jim Fassel, ended the season on an eight-game losing streak, and led them to a 4-1 record before the bye week. Coughlin’s message for benching Warner for Manning was to win games, and between his time in Jacksonville and how his season started with the Giants, he earned that trust.

Brian Flores, on the other hand, has none of that going for him. Yes, Flores has won some statement games, such as blowing out the 49ers in Santa Clara two weeks ago and defeating the Patriots on the road in week 17 of last season, but that does not change the fact that a Brian Flores-led team has never spent a day above .500. Unlike Coughlin, Flores has no credibility when it comes to winning games. This is not to say that Flores is a bad coach by any means; he was dealt a bad hand in Miami and made that team way more competitive than they had any right to be by the second half of last season. But, it is to say that to make a decision like this when you have never been above .500 and when the guy you’re benching is playing some of his best football ever and is winning games, is questionable at best.

Perhaps the plan was always to have Tua come in after the bye week. If 2020 has taught the world any lesson, though, it is the importance of being flexible. Plans change. And with the Dolphins just a game back of the division (unlike the Giants, who were four back of the Eagles in the NFC East when they made the switch), and with Ryan Fitzpatrick playing lights out, this seems like the wrong move for Flores to be making.

Tua Tagovailoa should absolutely be the future of the Dolphins. But Ryan Fitzpatrick should absolutely be the present.