Dolphins agree to four-year extension with Tua Tagovailoa

The Miami Dolphins on Friday signed quarterback Tua Tagovailoa to the largest contract in franchise history.

After months of negotiations, which led to Tagovailoa limiting his participation in Miami’s offseason program and training camp work until Friday, the Dolphins and the 2024 NFL passing leader agreed to a four-year extension reportedly worth $212.4 million, which will make him one of the NFL’s highest paid quarterbacks.

In terms of new money, the deal averages $53.1 million per season, which would place him behind only Joe Burrow and Trevor Lawrence among NFL quarterbacks; those two QBs average $55 million per season in new money. Tagovailoa’s agency, Athletes First, has been saying that the deal comes with $167 million in guaranteed money.

“I want to thank Chris Grier and Brandon Shore for working endlessly on this deal,” Tagovailoa said on his social media accounts. “I want to thank Mike McDaniel for believing in me, and my other coaches as well. I want to give a big shot out to my teammates for believing in me and supporting me during this process.”

The deal puts Tagovailoa under contract through 2028. More details of the contract should become known in the coming days.

Tagovailoa, who before the deal was expected to play on his fifth-year option, which was worth $23.1 million, is one of two quarterbacks (San Francisco’s Brock Purdy is the other) who has delivered back-to-back seasons with a 100-plus passer rating in 2022 and 2023.

Drafted fifth overall out of Alabama in 2020, Tagovailoa led the NFL in passer rating (105.5) in 2022, a season where concussions kept the former Alabama standout from participating in four regular season games and Miami’s playoff loss to the Buffalo Bills.

In 2023, Tagovailoa led the NFL’s top ranked offense, and was the league leader in passing yards (4,624), becoming the first Dolphins player to do so since Dan Marino did it in 1992.

“A lot of people will say he has coach [Mike] McDaniel calling plays, or he has X, Y, Z receivers and all these playmakers, but at the end of the day you still have to get those playmakers the ball,” receiver Tyreek Hill told ESPN in mid-July. “You got to be able to prepare each and every week with the same mindset knowing that you have crazy defensive ends coming off the edge trying to take your head off.

“There is a lot that goes into it. And for people to sit here and discredit Tua and say he isn’t deserving of a contract is wild to me. A lot of guys on the team understand his value and understand we need him. We need his leadership and we need his mindset.”

Tagovailoa and his camp were pushing for a multi-year deal that will put him alongside his draft class peers - Burrow, Justin Herbert and Jalen Hurts - and allow him to pocket $50 million plus a season in new money. His agency accomplished that.

All four of those 2020 quarterbacks now have deals topping $200 million: $275 million for Burrow (five years), $262.5 million for Herbert (five years) and $255 million for Hurts (five years). Tagovailoa received four years, at $212.5 million. A fifth member of that 2020 QB class is awaiting a new deal from Green Bay.

Seven NFL quarterbacks - Lawrence ($55 million on average), Burrow ($55 million), Jared Goff ($53 million), Patrick Mahomes ($52.6 million), Herbert ($52.5 million), Lamar Jackson ($52 million) and Hurts ($51 million) - got new deals, and those extensions average $50 million or more. Tagovailoa’s representatives were adamant about making him the eighth.

Tagovailoa’s $53.1 million average represents 20.8 percent of the current salary cap, and that’s the 11th highest percentage for an NFL player, per spotrac.

The average money for quarterback contracts is typically reported only factoring in new money and often doesn’t include salary from whatever time was left on the existing contract. If only the new money is included in tabulating Tagovailoa’s average salary, he now ranks third, slightly ahead of Goff ($53 million), Herbert ($52.5 million) and Jackson ($52 million).

But for contextual purposes -- if you include the totality of the deals (not only the new money) -- only Jackson, Baltimore’s two-time MVP, has a contract that averages more than $50 million a season. The five-year, $260 million deal Jackson signed last year, after playing on his fifth-year option in 2022, will actually pay him $52 million a season.

Goff’s new five-year, $245.6 million deal averages out to $49.1 million a season in totally, and a fully guaranteed five-year, $229 million contract Deshaun Watson’s got from Cleveland two years ago puts him in third place, averaging $45.8 million a season.

Burrow is in fourth place with a $45.1 million-a-year average if including the entirety of his seven-year deal with Cincinnati, which is worth $315.8 million. Then there’s Kirk Cousins, whose new contract with Atlanta averages $45 million a season. Lawrence is at $44.6 million on his seven-year deal but the average is $55 million if only new money is used for the calculation.

“We need Tua to go anywhere that we’re trying to go. All our dreams, goals and aspirations are reliant on [Tua],” said offensive tackle Terron Armstead, a team captain. “The Dolphins know that. The organization knows that. The city, the league [know it].”

Goff, who signed a five-year, $235.6 million deal with the Lions earlier this summer, owns the record for the largest signing bonus given out in the NFL at $73 million.

Mahomes has the largest contract ever given out in NFL history after signing a 10-year deal, which has since been reworked, adding two more seasons to boost his average salary from 2023 to 2026.

Per spotrac, Tagovailoa’s $167 million is the eighth highest guarantee among all NFL quarterbacks. Watson’s $230 million guaranteed ranks first, followed by Burrow ($219 million), Herbert ($218 million), Lawrence ($200 million), Jackson ($185 million), Hurts ($179 million) and Goff ($170 million).

Tagovailoa’s negotiations, which began in the spring, had not been smooth, and if a deal wasn’t agreed to, it was possible that he would have continued holding-in, which Tagovailoa seemingly put on pause Friday when he participated in all of the day’s practice, throwing a 70-yard bomb to Hill for a touchdown.

If Tagovailoa had played on the fifth-year option, the next step for Miami would have been to use the non-exclusive ($43 million) or transition tag ($35.4 million) to keep Tagovailoa on the team for the 2025 season, and that would have put the team in salary cap hell for another offseason.

With Tagovailoa’s deal done, the Dolphins could potentially turn their attention to signing Hill to an extension, restoring the five-time All-Pro receiver to his former status as one of the NFL’s three highest paid receivers, and locking up safety Jevon Holland past this season, where he’ll earn $3.3 million in the final year of his rookie deal.