Kelly: Tagovailoa should skip Dolphins offseason work until a deal gets done | Opinion

Is Tua Tagovailoa and his camp starting to play hardball with the Miami Dolphins, pushing for the multiyear extension the franchise claims is coming?

That seems to be what CBS Sports is reporting, claiming that Tagovailoa, the Dolphins’ starting quarterback for the past four seasons, has skipped “most” of the team’s offseason program, according to sources.

That report hasn’t been verified by the Miami Herald. And in fact, there have been weekly pictures and videos of Tagovailoa practicing with the team that has been posted on the Dolphins’ social media account.

However, those weekly check-ins stopped this week, which is the final week before the team begins the on-field, practice portion of the OTA program, which lasts for the next two weeks.

We will know more about Tagovailoa’s offseason program participation on Tuesday, which is the first session the media can attend.

General manager Chris Grier already warned Tagovailoa’s extension talks could carry into training camp, and maybe even the start of the regular seasons.

“There is no timeline on it,” Grier said at the NFL Combine. “These are deals that very rarely come together quickly. There are a lot of pieces and moving parts.“

Grier previously said Miami was focused on the NFL Draft, and Tagovailoa’s agent understood that. But the draft has been over for three weeks now, and this feels more like stalling.

Because everything but the mandatory minicamp portion of a team’s offseason program is voluntary, skipping a couple of the workouts per week — or all of them — isn’t a violation of any rules.

However, quarterbacks generally attend because they set the tone for the offense, if not the entire team in the offseason.

Tagovailoa has participated in off-campus throwing sessions with his skill players, most recently holding one with some of the team’s newcomers, including draftee Malik Washington. But during OTAs coaches are allowed to do film study sessions and generally install the team’s updated playbook.

While quarterbacks live by different rules, skipping OTAs — like former Dolphins center Connor Williams did last year— or holding a hold-in like former Dolphins defensive tackle Christian Wilkins did during training camp, is how business gets done in the NFL from a player standpoint.

That’s how the workforce gets the organization’s attention.

Wilkins, who was in a similar situation to Tagovailoa being asked to play on his fifth-year option instead of receiving a multiyear deal, sat out all but the first two weeks of training camp. He skipped Miami’s joint practices and all of the preseason, waiting for a satisfactory offer that never came.

When negotiations broke down in the fall, Wilkins eventually returned to practice and played in all 17 of Miami’s regular-season games. But he did his part to apply pressure, respectfully, before signing a lucrative deal to join the Las Vegas Raiders this offseason.

Williams sat out the entire offseason program, was fined $93,000 for missing minicamp, but ultimately reported despite his dissatisfaction with his contract.

Players will do anything they can to avoid playing on the final year of an expiring contract because that’s when they carry all the risk. Wouldn’t you know, Williams sustained a season-ending ACL injury in December, and there’s speculation that the injury might have ended the free agent’s career.

Miami replaced Williams with Aaron Brewer this offseason, and Williams remains unemployed, but his saga is the cautionary tale that Tagovailoa and his camp are seemingly trying to avoid.

At some point, Tagovailoa might need to remind the Dolphins the same thing they remind players every offseason when the team releases them despite there being a contract, which is that football isn’t just a sport. It’s a business.

Everyone has to look out for themselves in the business world, and Tagovailoa sitting out the rest of the offseason program, until he has years and more guaranteed money added to his contract, would deliver that message.

If the Dolphins drag out negotiations with the 2023 AFC starting quarterback for the Pro Bowl, or give him what he and his team feels is a lowball offer on a multiyear extension, skipping OTAs might be the only way to get the decision maker’s attention.

At the bare minimum, Tagovailoa and his camp should tell the Dolphins he’s not participating in the 2024 preseason unless his contract is reworked, especially since comparable quarterbacks such as Detroit’s Jared Goff, who received a four-year, $212 million extension, which guarantees him $170.6 million, are landing lucrative deals this week.

If Tagovailoa and the Dolphins don’t agree to a new contract, he’ll make $1,363,000 per game playing on the fifth-year option, which guarantees him just less than $23.2 million. That’s a significant raise from last year’s salary, which paid him $278,733 per contest on the fourth year of his rookie deal last year. But it doesn’t provide him any protection.

In an ideal world, from the organization’s standpoint the Dolphins would have Tagovailoa play on the fifth year option, giving him another season to improve, prove he’s durable again, and clean up his game, before making him the highest-paid player in franchise history.

But in that scenario Tagovailoa is assuming all of the risk, and that’s not a place a fragile quarterback would want to be in.