The Miami Dolphins Could Never Start Over
Credit: Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports
The Miami Dolphins had to know they were walking into a trap. No offense to Tua Tagovailoa, not really. Tua had enough doubters coming out of college, and all he’s done in the NFL is throw for a buncha yards. A league-leading 4,624 last year, in particular. His teammates campaigned for him to get the bag in recent weeks, but let’s not make any mistakes: The Dolphins were always going to pay Tua.
And pay him, they did. Miami inked Tagovailoa to a four-year, $212.4 million contract, which made him the highest-paid quarterback in the NFL… for a few hours, anyway, until Jordan Love signed his own mega-deal with the Green Bay Packers. Is it a poison pill? Yeah, you bet. Starting next year, Tua will make about 18% of the salary cap in a league where that’s a death sentence to almost any team’s Super Bowl hopes.
But you know what else is a death sentence? Starting over. At least, it was for Miami the last time they moved on from a franchise quarterback.
Making a Faustian bargain with a non-elite quarterback is much less reasonable coming from Green Bay, who transitioned from Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers seamlessly, then pulled off the same maneuver to decent effect with Love. You do get it with Miami, though, who spent 20 years trying to replace Dan Marino with the likes of Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chad Pennington, and Ryan Tannehill… and those were the good quarterbacks during that time.
Can anyone blame Chris Grier or Mike McDaniel for opting to play the “Build Around An Overpaid Quarterback” game instead of trying to find the next franchise player? Can any Dolphins fan be blamed for getting on board with “Pay Tua” instead of spending another two decades in the desert?
As easy as it is to say “just start over,” anyone around South Beach should know there aren’t guarantees. To get anything resembling a guarantee, you can’t pick in the 6-10 range. That’s how Miami walked away with Tannehill instead of Andrew Luck in 2008. You have to be bad enough, and have things break for you in a way to get into that top-5, preferably top-3 range in the Draft.
And even then, as the Dolphins’ history can attest, there are no guarantees there, either. You could have the No. 2 pick in a draft where the best quarterbacks are… EJ Manuel and second-rounder Geno Smith, as the Dolphins had in 2013. Or the best quarterback could be Matt Ryan, who went on to never win a Super Bowl after Miami passed on him for Jake Long in 2008. Or, hey, a team can just blow it, as Miami did in 2005 at No. 2 overall, as they and 20 other teams didn’t take Aaron Rodgers.
So, it’s too much money. That’s simply not the point, even if it closes Miami’s true Super Bowl window after this year. Grier and McDaniel can worry about that later. The cap always rises, cheap talent can be drafted, and contracts can be re-structured. That’s all stuff to worry about later.
What the front office doesn’t have to do now is worry about who is playing the most important position on the field. Is Tua overrated? As the second-highest-paid quarterback in the league, yes, unless you’re Tyreek Hill. But is he a player you can install as your signal-caller for a half-decade and not have to think about? Of course. Say what you want about the Kirk Cousins and Dak Prescotts of the world, you’re probably making the playoffs with those guys starting for you.
It’s not an ideal situation, but it’s what Miami has, and they’re rolling with it. Sometimes there are worse things than taking the poison pill, and for Grier and McDaniel, that’s having to put a complete unknown behind the wheel of the offensive machine they’ve built. You can like it or not, but that’s what “Pay Tua” is all about.
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