Jeremy Fowler: Dolphins ‘saving money’ to get Tua Tagovailoa paid after strong season

The Miami Dolphins are planning on making Tua Tagovailoa a very rich man, according to Jeremy Fowler of ESPN.

On Saturday, the NFL analyst joined ESPN’s flagship SportsCenter show for an appearance. He touched on numerous potential deals for NFL quarterbacks, and Tagovailoa’s name came up. Evidently, the Dolphins are putting some money away already to be able to pony up for their signal-caller’s new deal.

“Tua Tagovailoa, this one’s interesting because he could be the path of least resistance as far as getting a deal done because he showed he was healthy, played a full 17 games, 11 wins, 4,600 passing yards, so he showed improvement,” Fowler said on SportsCenter. “The Dolphins know that and they’ve been fiscally responsible this offseason, saving money to give him some coin.

“It just depends on how far are they willing to go? Are they willing to pay him $50 million, that’s the question.”

After dealing with injury concerns over the last couple of seasons of his football career, Tagovailoa played in every game in 2023. He led Miami to an 11-6 record and made the Pro Bowl after leading the NFL in passing with 4,624 yards.

The Dolphins lost to the Chiefs, the eventual Super Bowl champions, on a frigid night in Kansas City to open the playoffs, but they found out they have the right quarterback leading the charge.

It seems as if Miami will do whatever they can to keep Tua Tagovailoa as their quarterback moving forward, it simply remains to be seen what the number is that’ll keep him happy now, and into the future.

Tua Tagovailoa ‘not telling anyone’ about offseason workouts, contract negotiations

Moreover, Tagovailoa is keeping his workouts under wraps as he prepares for the 2024 campaign. Last year, he was learning martial arts. This year, who knows. In the meantime, the Dolphins and Tagovailoa’s representatives are negotiating a contract extension to keep the quarterback happy in Miami, as Fowler noted.

Tagovailoa took a trip to Hawaii, his home state, this past weekend, for an inaugural youth football camp in conjunction with his Tua Foundation non-profit. Reporters asked the former Alabama star about his current workouts, since they were such a topic of discussion a year ago. But he gave a curious response.

“I’m not telling anyone what I’m doing this offseason,” the Dolphins quarterback told reporters who gathered at Kamehameha’s Kunuiakea Stadium. “That’s what makes me special in my way. I’m a very private person so I think that’s gonna be in-house.”

Continuing, Miami already picked up his fifth-year option for this season. He’ll earn a guaranteed $23.71 million. However, sides are negotiating something more long term. And like his workouts, Tagovailoa isn’t talking about a potential contract either. He took a pass, other than to say everything was cool.

“They’ve been good. Right now, I’m letting my agent handle that,” Tagovailoa said. “I’m focused on my family, I’m focused on continuing to better myself, better my craft and we’ll talk more about that when that time comes. For now, exciting times ahead, that’s for sure.”

On3’s Suzanne Haliburton and Nick Kosko contributed to this article.