Tua Tagovailoa Played Guitar on Manningcast and Sounded Pretty Good

Dolphins Quarterback Tua Tagovailoa has a lot of talents on the field, but during his appearance on the Manningcast of ESPN's Monday Night Football showdown between the Jacksonville Jaguars and Cincinnati Bengals, he showed off one of his off-field skills as well.

Tagovailoa joined Peyton and Eli Manning on Monday and showed off his skills as a guitarist, playing a rendition of Eric Clapton's classic "Tears in Heaven."

The heartfelt ballad, which Clapton penned after the tragic death of his young son, is one of the more famous guitar-driven songs with an easily recognizable opening riff.

Tagovailoa executed it well, with a well-rehearsed, clean technique that included a number of the inflections that Clapton hits in his version.

The Mannings, it seems, are...not as musically gifted as Tagovailoa.

Peyton tried to sing his play-by-play analysis along with the song, which (unless he was going for atonal and arrythmic) was less than impressive.

"You guys are hilarious," Tagovailoa said when he finished playing and the Mannings applauded.

"You don't sing also?" Eli asked. "You just play? I thought you were singing it. I thought you were busting it out."

"That's why we have Peyton," Tagovailoa replied. "Peyton was jamming. We were waiting for the second verse with Eli."

Tagovailoa draws well-deserved praise for his ability to quarterback an NFL football team, and he is considered an outside contender for MVP.

Still, by playing guitar in front of a couple of former athletes who would clearly not consider themselves musicians, Tagovailoa may have been reminded of a lesson most musicians learn very quickly: People don't generally care if you can play guitar, unless you can do things they've never seen before. If you play a well-known song like "Tears in Heaven," even if you play it faithfully and well, someone might (badly) sing about cadences and first downs over top of it.

Tagovailoa has spoken about his love for music before. He grew up singing in a church choir, and once said that while he "loves music," he wouldn't consider himself "good at music."

"Every time I'm with my family, that's all they want to do is just sing," Tagovailoa told FOX in 2020. "In Polynesian families, that's what it's about."

Tagovailoa's family, meanwhile, compared his dedication to football to his dedication to music.

"Where Tua comes from, all his life he's been singing," his aunt told FOX. "Just like how he's worked tirelessly in practice perfecting his skills, we all work so tirelessly in singing until we perfected our singing, so when it comes Sunday, we give our best to God."