The thing is Tua WAS the consensus #1 overall pick in 2020 and had been for at least two years, and only Burrow's SEC championship victory over Bama + national le + Heisman at the very end of the 2019 NCAAF season + Tua's late-2019 season injury at the end of his Bama career which changed all of that in Burrow's favor. Before that, Burrow wasn't even a consensus top 3 QB in that draft.
"Tank for Tua" was a real thing and Miami had bought into that and planned for that for a very long time. Sure, they won some games down the stretch, but that was mainly after the Tua injury and Burrow's ascent anyway, so it roughly evened out. But the scores from the first few games of the season pointed to blatant tanking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_M...olphins_season