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Here’s how Dolphins rookie Tua Tagovailoa spent his first $1 million in the NFL

Tua Tagovailoa

Miami Dolphins rookie quarterback Tua Tagovailoa earned a lucrative contract as the fifth overall pick in April’s draft, with a new report showing how he spent the first $1 million of that deal.

Tagovailoa spoke with GQ.com about the $30.28 million deal, with $19.6 million of that amount coming in the form of a signing bonus.

One of Tagovailoa’s earliest purchases was a Mother’s Day gift to his mother, a 2020 Cadillac Escalade costing $80,000.

“She was excited to get the car,” Tagovailoa, said. “She always wanted a really nice and big family car, and so that’s why I got her that car, so car for Mom, 80,000.”

Tagovailoa next purchased two cars for himself, a Ford Flex and a BMW. The estimated cost of the Ford Flex was $40,000.

“The reason behind me getting two cars is one, so when my parents or my family members come, they can use one of those cars,” Tagovailoa said. “Then the other one I got because I knew no one else could get down that low in the car, and so I knew no one else would want to drive it.”

Some jewelry, including a watch for his father, was next on Tagovailoa’s shopping list.

“I’m not a big jewelry fan, but I got an Apple Watch,” Tagovailoa said. “Oh, that’s right. Yeah, so I, for jewelry, I ended up getting my dad a watch, one of the Rolex watches. It was one of their classic signature watches.

“That was some money, and then I ended up getting myself some earrings. I don’t know what I was thinking when I bought these earrings. I don’t know, maybe because it was real, but I think, regardless, I could have just went to any store and bought earrings and people would’ve thought they were real anyway, so bad, bad investment.”

Needing a place to live, Tagovailoa also purchased a home and made a healthy investment in gym equipment.

“Yeah, I ended up buying a house,” Tagovailoa said. “This is where we’re at right here. We’re doing this at my house. Really, the biggest thing that I wanted in a house that I was looking for was a yard, because if a pandemic ended up happening again, where we couldn’t go to a park, or you couldn’t go to the gym, I’d just be able to go out to the backyard and just be able to do my footwork, get my throwing in, just be able to have everything here, and then after that, I can just jump in the pool, come back in the house, watch TV, and just enjoy.

“When my family ends up coming, it would be a nice, nice place for them to kind of hang out and relax before game days, and then I also ended up getting gym equipment for my garage. It was about 30, I would say it’s about 30, so gym equipment.”

Tagovaiiloa did spend some of his money in a philanthropic manner by investing $300,000 in scholarships for students at his high school in Hawaii and for students on the island.

After three weeks of his first NFL campaign, Tagovailoa has yet to take the field for the Dolphins, though he’s being brought along slowly during his first season.

However, if Tagovailoa lives up to the fanfare since he was selected by the Dolphins, he should have more than enough money to splurge on even more expensive items in the future.