How Recent QB Contracts Lay The Foundation For Tua Tagovailoa Contract Negotiations

The Miami Dolphins are hoping to secure a long-term contract with their young quarterback, Tua Tagovailoa, before the start of the 2024 NFL season. What QB contract trends could help strike a deal?

This does indeed feel like a matter of “if” and not “when” for the Miami Dolphins and their 5th-year quarterback. Tua Tagovailoa has his fair share of unanswered questions as he enters a high-pressure 2024 season — he and the Dolphins will look to get over some late-season slumps that have cost the Dolphins in each of the last two seasons. But there’s momentum churning towards an extension for Tagovailoa sooner rather than later despite all the current narratives that are “in-season” with criticisms around Miami.

You’ve heard them plenty. I won’t bore them with you here.

Make no mistake, Tagovailoa and the Dolphins absolutely should have been able to pull out one of their late-game opportunities against a contender last year. Be it Philadelphia in Week 7 on the road, Kansas City in Week 9 in Germany or Buffalo in Week 18 at home with the AFC East on the line. Each game saw Miami with the ball in the 4th quarter within a touchdown…and Miami lost them all. I would like to think the narratives would have been different if Miami won one of those games, played the Steelers in the 1st-round of the AFC playoffs and made a divisional round appearance.

But I’m also realistic enough to know the fickle nature of the discourse around Miami’s playoff drought and Tagovailoa as a whole. I’m not sure all the same questions still wouldn’t exist.

But we talked about that earlier in the week. I’ll let that talking point be — but if you missed it, you can catch it here.

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Today is more about the pros and cons of Tagovailoa, the Dolphins’ pending investment in him and how the team can do it “right” relative to the recent trends across the league.

So again, the focus isn’t if Miami should make this decision. The decision has already been made — it’s just a matter of the details. And this isn’t quite the same game as negotiating with a defensive tackle a la Christian Wilkins. Quarterbacks are a different level of scarcity and Miami’s unique passer, with tailored strengths that Miami has embraced, makes finding reasonable alternatives a challenging proposition. Maybe you land the ultimately “get out of jail free card” after trading three 1st-round picks for Trey Lance and get Brock Purdy with the last pick in the draft…but that’s not a strategy you can build a competitive plan around. It’s just not. Banking on drilling down exceptions to the rule is a first-class ticket to being out of a job.

How do the Dolphins do this right? There’s some trends across recent quarterback contracts that provide some clues.

Off to it, then.

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Money Talks

Getting a contract extension done isn’t just about the annual average of the contract — although that is what gets thrown out front row & center when reports are published on these new deals. Everyone loves a good headline, after all. But the timing of these deals and the cash flow that’s created is a part of the negotiations that requires plenty of attention.

Most contracts feature a nice influx of cash up front (or in Year 1 of the new deal in a proactive extension) or, alternatively, a disproportionate wad of cash at the back end of the contract. Joe Burrow’s 5-year, $275M extension has both. The 4th and 5th years of his rookie deal dropped $111.25M in cash into Burrow’s lap in years that he was technically on the books. Year 1 of his new contract comes in 2025.

Remember: Burrow’s contract was reported as a record-setting $55M APY deal. But because the Bengals dumped so much extra cash into 2023 and 2024, which were the last two years of his rookie deal, Burrow’s cash take home in 2025 is just $35.25M. As a matter of fact, the first four years of Burrow’s new deal sit between $35M and $40.5M in take home cash.

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Joe Burrow Annual Cash Owed

2023: $45.545M
2024: $65.714M

NEW YEARS

2025: $35.25M
2026: $35.25M
2027: $37.25M
2028: $40.50M
2029: $50.539M

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Big cash up front, big cash in the back. Of course, none of Burrow’s 2029 money is guaranteed. That makes it unofficial money and somewhat “fluff” for the averages of the contract. Either Burrow will earn a contract extension by then, or the team will have moved on by then.

Miami doesn’t have the same luxury as Cincinnati did with Burrow or the Chargers had with Justin Herbert in that both of those contracts were signed going into Year 4 of the quarterback’s career. Miami is looking at signing their contract extension going into Year 5, so they only have one year of pre existing contract to dump new cash into instead of two.

But this is where things do get interesting. The Chargers had two years of wiggle room to dump new cash but because of the state of affairs of Los Angeles’ cap management and the slew of old contracts the team was saddled with, they didn’t really use things to the same advantage as Cincinnati. Herbert’s take home cash in the final two years of the old rookie contract is $73.738M; nearly $40M less than Burrow got.