No matter where this Miami Dolphins season goes — no matter if they solve their issues, no matter if they sink into January — owner Steve Ross has two substantial issues to weigh to protect his franchise:

1. How to best invest in another frontline quarterback?

2. Should general manager Chris Grier make that decision?

There’s no debate using a first-round draft pick should be in play next spring as Tua Tagovailoa heals from another concussion. This isn’t about Tua’s talent or how far a team can go with him. It’s about health issues that were there when the Dolphins drafted him and have become increasingly serious as his career continues.

He might return from this latest concussion and play the rest of this season at a good level. He might suffer another concussion his first game back and be out for the season. Who knows? And who knows about next season?

Tua’s health is one concern. The franchise’s future is another. It’s not just the concussion bogeyman that hovers over this team in a manner Ross, Grier and McDaniel didn’t consider hard enough last summer in awarding Tagovailoa a $212 million contract extension.

Another quarterback misplay became obvious when the backup they chose and invested three seasons in, Skylar Thompson, looked lost in starting for Tua against Seattle. Then he got hurt.

That meant the season fell to Tim Boyle, who was signed in late August. Coach Mike McDaniel didn’t trust Boyle to start, though. So, Tyler “Snoop” Huntley was signed and arrived with little time to prepare. Do you see why a veteran NFL official once said getting the quarterback right is, “60 percent of a GM’s job?”

The Dolphins can still dig their way out of this 2-3 start if they clean up some problems, get Tua back and become the team they expected. There’s plenty of season left for this team to find its way.

But someone has to protect this organization from a quarterback situation no one can feel good about. That starts with Ross deciding who makes the quarterback decision. Does he trust Grier to get it right this time?

Only the inner circle of Ross, Grier and team president Tom Garfinkel know exactly how the decisions have played out in their aqua tower the past six seasons with Grier in charge. It’s nine years with him as a prime football voice if you include the ones he ran the draft and partnered with Mike Tannenbaum in driving the full organization.

You have to look back there to look ahead here, too. Other teams made inspired decisions in 2017 and 2018 in trading up for the likes of Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson. Ross even wondered in the draft room if the Dolphins should take Jackson.

Instead, the Dolphins signed Jay Cutler when Ryan Tannehill re-injured his knee in 2017. That bombed. They stayed with Tannehill for a final 2018 season before deciding to tank the next season.

Grier traded a second-round pick for a young Josh Rosen before that 2019 season. It was such a bad decision it could have delivered the desired No. 1 pick as their blueprint hoped except the other quarterback he signed, Ryan Fitzpatrick, was too good. And coach Brian Flores played to win.

There remain two questions looking back: Why didn’t Grier or Ross force Flores to play Rosen (even trading Fitzpatrick, as Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane famously did to some starters to force manager Art Howe to play whom the GM wanted)?

The larger question: Why was Flores hired? He was everything the Dolphins didn’t want to be in 2019. Tough. Strong-minded. Too respect-the-game principled to lose with purpose.

Grier didn’t initially bring up Flores to be hired, as things went. But he went along with the idea. That’s the question about his nine-year run. The GM seems to go along with the current rather than set it in a hard manner this blueprint demanded at times.

Next came the decision of the small quarterback with questions in Tua or the prototype quarterback with questions in Justin Herbert. Tua’s career was resurrected by McDaniel’s coaching. He had a 2022 season marred by concussions before a good and healthy 2023 season.

And here we are with Tua again in concussion protocol. No one knows where the Dolphins will pick next draft. No one has completed scouting on the 2025 quarterback class. All you know is the Dolphins need a quarterback to insure the future in a manner they didn’t think necessary before this latest concussion, a manner they didn’t foresee when giving him the $212 million contract.

That contract means they can’t sign an expensive, free-agent quarterback this winter. So, the choice becomes using a top draft pick to protect tomorrow or signing a cheaper veteran as a bridge to tomorrow.

That’s Grier’s decision for now. It’s Ross’s decision if it remains the GM’s decision come next offseason. This season can change for the better with so much time left. But those two questions — the next quarterback decision and who makes it — won’t change no matter how this year ends.

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