Dolphins linebacker Koa Misi has agreed to restructure his contract, Andy Slater of 940 AM tweets. Barry Jackson of The Miami Herald (on Twitter) has confirmed the news. Under the terms of the new deal, Misi gets $1.15MM guaranteed whether he passes a physical or not, Ian Rapoport of NFL.com tweets. The linebacker does expect to play again and anticipates getting the green light in May. 
Misi, 30, was due a $4.175MM base salary for 2017. Given that Misi only played in three games in 2016 and has likely been squeezed out of the starting lineup, it was an untenable figure for Miami. The good news is that Misi is expected to be fully recovered from his neck injury time in time for the 2017 season and his pay cut should allow him to stick on the roster.
In one way or another, Misi’s restructure is likely tied to Zach Brown‘s free agent visit on Tuesday. It’s possible that Misi’s pay cut could pave the way for a Brown signing, though the Dolphins are still pretty tight against the cap. At minimum, the Brown visit probably gave the Dolphins additional leverage in the restructuring talks with Misi.
In 2015, Misi’s last predominantly healthy season, he totaled 78 tackles and had one pass defensed. Though he’s never had huge sack totals, he did have 12 sacks from 2010 through 2014. Pro Football Focus, for the most part, has always been high on the former second-round pick. In 2014 and 2015, he had scores of 81.5 and 80.8, painting him as a top-30 linebacker in the league.
Releasing Misi outright would have left the Dolphins with $578K in dead money. This marks the second straight year in which Misi agreed to a pay cut in order to stay with the Fins.
Sure hope this is to get Brown on board. Misi is only a good depth player at this point.
Tight up against the cap?
Nearly all of the contracts to date have been cap friendly. After counting Alonso and Misi, MISA probably has about $15 mil in cap left.
Yeah, that’s fairly tight. If it’s $15 mil, & that’s probably best case, that leaves less than $12 mil after signing the draft class. Signing Brown would probably take about half that. $6 mil doesn’t leave much wiggle room, especially if they still want to add role players.
Takes about $6 mil to sign the rookies and MIA likes to keep about $5 mil in reserve or to roll over to next year.
MIA depth chart is pretty full right now, so I am not seeing many more role players coming in.
I do not see any Landry deal getting done this year.
There is ample room for Brown at MIA’s likely price point.
They will need 7 to 10 million for draft picks and landrys extension
takes 8 mil to sign draft class
7 million for draft class, plus 2 to 3 million for practice squad and undrafted rookies and camp invites. While they can cut Jordan to squeeze more money out. Signing brown at his asking price is way to tight for if they need to sign guys for injury. With Miami wanting another dt, guard, lb, cb, de and safety. The draft can fill a lot of needs since some aren’t dire for a starter.
Only the top 50-some players are counted against the cap.
It appears MIA has $15.9 mil of cap, far more than BUF’s 10.9 mil.
link to twitter.com
Unless they move some money, I am not seeing how BUF can offer more than backup money to Brown.