Miami Dolphins, Tua Tagovailoa contract rumors: What is the market for Pro Bowl quarterback?

Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa enters the 2024 NFL season, coming off his first Pro Bowl selection and leading the league in passing yards in 2023 after leading the league in passer rating in 2022. He also enters this season slated to play in the final year of his rookie contract after Miami used the team fifth-year option to ensure he stays with the club through this year. The deal pays Tagovailoa a fully-guaranteed $23.2 million this season, but provides no security beyond this season.

The Dolphins and Tagovailoa are working on a contract extension, with the team hoping to keep their 2020 fifth-overall selection with the club for the foreseeable future and Tagovailoa looking to maximize his salary. “I’ll tell you one thing; the market is the market,” Tagovailoa told the media last week when asked about the contract negotiations. But, what is the market?

A lot of discussion has focused on the idea that Tagovailoa’s new contract would be a record-setting deal in excess of the $55 million per year contract signed by Joe Burrow with the Cincinnati Bengals during the 2023 season. Is that the market Tagovailoa mentioned? What should be seen as the right number for Tagovailoa?

(Note: The numbers used this article, as via OverTheCap.com and use the total value of the contract as reported. In the NFL, when the majority of contracts are not fully guaranteed, the true value of the contract is less than the total value of the deal, but the numbers reported are usually the total value number, leading to this comparison.)

Instead of just looking at the reported annual value of the contract and then projecting Tagovailoa to top the deal, continuing the trend of each quarterback setting a new record for the highest contract, I wanted to look at how much the quarterback costs the team compared to the salary cap. The salary cap increases (nearly) every year, which logically allows for players to receive higher salaries. How do quarterback salaries compare to each salary cap?

I compared the top 15 quarterbacks in terms of annual salary to the cap for the year the contract was signed. Teams obviously sign deals expecting the cap to increase, but the amount of increase is not always clear – and in 2021 (due to the COVID-19 pandemic year), the cap decreased with the knowledge that it would drastically increase in the following years, which does throw off the comparison a little.

Here are the top 15 quarterback salaries by average value, with the associated salary cap and the percentage of the cap the quarterback’s salary represents against that cap:

Using those numbers, a quarterback’s average salary is, on average, 21 percent of the salary cap for the year in which he signed his contract. There are some outliers – the New York Jets’ Aaron Rodgers and the New York Giants’ Daniel Jones only accounted for 16.7 percent, while Joe Burrow’s contract with Cincinnati was nearly a quarter of the cap – but that will always be true.

There is a lot made of Patrick Mahomes’ contract with the Kansas City Chiefs only ranking eighth, tied with Kirk Cousin’s new deal with the Atlanta Falcons, with an average salary of $45 million. But when it was signed back in 2020, it was 22.7 percent of the cap for that season, above the 21 percent mark. Mahomes is also in line for a new contract soon. The original deal was signed as a 10-year contract, built around five-year increments. It runs through the 2031 season (with 2032 and 2033 listed as void years on the deal), but his guarantees run out after the 2025 season. Also, starting in 2025, his salary cap number jumps to over $60 million yearly. The Chiefs will likely look to bring down those numbers, while Mahomes likely wants guaranteed money added back into the deal.

The 2024 salary cap is set at $255.4 million. Using the 21 percent mark as the likely landing position for a Tagovailoa deal, that would result in a $53.6 million average salary for Miami’s quarterback. That would land him ahead of Goff and behind Burrow in the average salary value list.

How about the guaranteed money for Tagovailoa’s contract? To understand what that should be, I looked at the total value of the same 15 contracts and how much of that deal is guaranteed for the players.

Again, we find the outliers, including the Cleveland Browns giving Deshaun Watson a fully guaranteed contract in 2022 – something no one else has matched yet. Mahomes’ contract also pops back up, with just 31.3 percent of his contract’s value being guaranteed, but again, it was a 10-year contract worth $450 million, but will have to be re-worked soon.

The average guarantee for quarterbacks comes in at about 67 percent of their total value.

Finally, we need to look at the contracts’ length.

Mahomes’ 10-year deal stands out, but we have discussed that. Rodgers’ three-year deal with the New York Jets is based on his age when the deal was signed. Overall, the average length of the contracts is 4.9 years, which seems to fit giving a quarterback a 5-year deal and maximizing the ability to spread the salary cap accounting over multiple years.

Tua Tagovailoa’s market

Adding all that together, we find the market for Tagovailoa’s new deal to be:

Five years, $268 million ($53.6 million per year) with $179.6 million guaranteed.

What do you think of that deal for Tagovailoa? Will he hold out (or in) to get to the $55 million Burrow received? Should he set a new high mark for the league? Should the Dolphins try to get him on a more team-friendly deal to ensure they can keep the team’s core together for longer?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.