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Tua Tagovailoa Cited as Player Contract Worth Watching for Dolphins in The Athletic piece

Originally posted on Dolphins Talk | By Jesse Cinquini | Last updated Jul 9, 2025 9:30 AM ET

Tua Tagovailoa Cited as Player Contract Worth Watching for Dolphins in The Athletic piece

With the dog days of the offseason upon us, writers for The Athletic picked at least one player contract (on occasion two) on every one of the NFL’s 32 teams worth keeping tabs on. Some players are currently in contractual conundrums, while others are signed to deals that could lead to some teams having to make uncomfortable decisions in the near future.

The player contract cited for the Dolphins might have plenty of fans of the team surprised, as Jim Ayello mentioned, none other than quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. At first glance, Tagovailoa might not stand out as someone who could be playing for his Dolphins career in the 2025 season, considering his youth and the fact that he’s already a proven starting-caliber quarterback.

However, Ayello explained that there’s a non-zero chance Tagovailoa could be on his way out of Miami if the Dolphins have another down year.

“There’s a world where this is Tagovailoa’s final season in Miami,” Ayello wrote. “To be clear, the odds of the Dolphins moving on after this season are remote (it’s far more likely after 2026), but it’s maybe not as crazy as you think. Imagine if the up-against-the-cap Dolphins struggle to a five- or six-win 2025 season. Ownership decides it’s time for a hard reset, and the new GM and coach don’t see Tagovailoa, with his concussion history and limitations as a pocket passer, as a franchise QB. They decide to draft a QB and look to trade Tagovailoa to a QB-needy team. His value would depend on his health and how he plays this year, but for the record: Simply cutting him after this season would come with a $79 million dead cap hit. That’s a lot, but it wouldn’t even be the NFL record.”

The Dolphins have yet to win a playoff game in the Mike McDaniel era, and another season sans a single playoff victory might be enough for the team to run out of patience and blow up this current core of players.

For as talented as Tagovailoa is, he’s played more than 13 games in just one of his first five NFL seasons and was plagued by the injury bug again in the 2024 season. He was limited to just 11 appearances last season, and there’s real reason to be skeptical if he will ever be consistently available at the highest level.

Ayello mentioned trading and cutting Tagovailoa as potential options for the Dolphins if they decide to move on from him following next season. It’s worth noting that Tagovailoa is in the middle of a four-year, $212 million contract that he signed with the Dolphins in the summer of 2024, and Ayello claimed that cutting him after next season would come with nearly an $80 million hit to the team’s dead cap.

This article first appeared on Dolphins Talk and was syndicated with permission.

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