The Dolphins will part ways with Tua Tagovailoa this offseason, and the entire NFL knows it.
As a result, other teams are not interested in the 27-year-old quarterback as a trade target, per Essentially Sports’ Tony Pauline. There are multiple clubs, however, who would pursue Tagovailoa as a free agent. All they have to do is wait for Miami to cut him.
Moving any draft capital for Tagovailoa to then take on his massive contract – including $54MM in guaranteed compensation in 2026 (via OverTheCap) – is an over-investment in an asset that has rapidly depreciated over the last two seasons. Signing him as a free agent, however, would cost no draft picks and only a veteran-minimum salary, since Tagovailoa would still be receiving his pay from Miami.
Perhaps an enterprising general manager with plenty of extra cap space could take a creative approach.
The Dolphins are just $772k over the 2026 salary cap and badly need to clear space just to fill their roster, sign their draft class, and field a team this season. Releasing Tagovailoa will incur a dead cap charge of $99.2MM, some of which can be pushed into 2027 with a post-June 1 designation. That will still add $11.1MM to their balance sheet this year. That can be offset with a post-June 1 release of Bradley Chubb, but the Dolphins’ new regime probably wants to do more than balance the budget in their first offseason.
Back to that enterprising GM: he could try to acquire Tagovailoa via trade and ask the Dolphins to give him better draft capital in exchange for taking on his massive salary. Miami would not package Tagovailoa and a draft pick in exchange for no return, but perhaps a pick swap upgrading one of the acquiring team’s selections could be equitable. The new club would have a potential bridge starter, and the Dolphins will have minimized the financial impact of moving on from their former first-round pick. There are also a number of teams that need to spend rather aggressively this offseason to meet the league’s three-year cash spending requirement, and absorbing Tagovailoa’s salary is one way to contribute to that effort.
Still, the most likely path is an outright release followed by Tagovailoa signing for the veteran minimum with a new team. He will likely be looking for a starting opportunity, or at least the potential to earn one.
Or you could wait and sign him for veteran minimum once he’s released.
Thats what the article says….
Exactly like the article says!
And then the article concocts a story about trading him. Which isn’t going to happen.
Vikings could be a landing spot on league minimum
OR………..the Dolphins could just keep him. Even if they make Tua inactive every week and don’t even trust him to hold a clipboard, it’s still $43 million more dollars they’ll have to spend to build their next under-achieving team and just cut him this time next year. It’s insane and there is zero justification for cutting him and absorbing that cap hit. It’s arguably the second worst contract in NFL history (Deshaun Watson takes that honor), so all they’re doing is making it worse. Who knows, maybe they get really lucky and he gets injured during training camp and they can place him on IR for the season or another team suffers a big injury and they can trade him to someone desperate. There’s no good scenario, but cutting him now is the worst one of all.
The “tank for tua” penalties keep rolling in. Lost draft picks, lost out on Tom Brady and Sean Payton, lost a lot of games because tua played and now their in salary cap purgatory for 2years. Be smart dolphins and say all the right things when you field a 2-15 team this year.
We know the perfect landing spot for Tua. J-E-T-S.