The Dolphins become the latest team to take on a big dead cap charge with $99.2M for Tua Tagovailoa

The Miami Dolphins are moving on from Tua Tagovailoa but his contract will still be an albatross on the team for two more seasons.

The Dolphins announced their plans Monday to cut Tua Tagovailoa — less than two years after he signed a $212 million extension with the club — in a move that will leave a record $99.2 million of dead money on Miami's salary cap.

The charge for Tagovailoa can be split over the 2026 and ‘27 seasons if the Dolphins designate him to be cut after June 1 but nevertheless it will have to hit the team’s salary cap, topping the $85 million charge Denver took when cutting Russell Wilson two years ago.

A dead money charge is any money on a team's salary cap for a player no longer on the roster. In most cases, the dead money charges come from signing bonus money that has already been paid to a player but was pro-rated for multiple years on the salary cap to lower the single-year charge.

Teams can spread out bonuses for up to five years — with the charge being split evenly among those years — but that charge accelerates to the salary cap when a team trades or releases a player before it has all hit the cap.

In Tagovailoa's case, there was also $54 million in guaranteed salary for 2026 for which the Dolphins are still responsible. Any money Tagovailoa gets from a new team this season would eventually be credited back to Miami but that will only be a little more than $1 million for the veteran minimum salary since no team will pay him more than what the Dolphins owe him this season.

NFL teams have been more willing in recent years to take on hefty dead money charges as the salary cap keeps rising at a high rate, making the move less punitive than it used to be.

Here's a look at some of the largest dead money cap hits NFL teams have incurred after moving on from players, with numbers from the website Over The Cap:

The Dolphins got very little production out of Tagovailoa after the hefty contract extension they handed him in the 2024 offseason. Tagovailoa had been under contract on the fifth-year option of his rookie deal for $23.2 million in 2024 and the team could have used a franchise tag of about $38 million for 2025 instead of giving him an extension.

Instead, Tagovailoa will be paid nearly $125 million for that one extra season in which he made 14 starts, throwing for 2,660 yards and 20 TDs as the Dolphins finished 7-10 and fired both general manager Chris Grier and coach Mike McDaniel.

The Broncos traded two first-round picks and two seconds to acquire Wilson from Seattle in the 2022 offseason and rewarded him with a five-year, $245 million extension before he took a snap for the team, even though he had two years remaining on his contract.

Wilson never even made it to the new deal, getting cut after his second season with the Broncos. Wilson was paid about $124 million for his two seasons in Denver before signing with Pittsburgh for the minimum in 2024. Wilson counted for $53 million on the cap for the Broncos in 2024 and $32 million last season when Denver still managed to earn the No. 1 seed and make it to the AFC title game.

Tagovailoa wasn't the first high-profile quarterback to be told he would be cut this offseason despite a heavy cap charge. The Cardinals did it last week with Murray.

The former No. 1 overall pick in 2019 signed a five-year, $230.5 million extension in 2022 that still had $36.8 million in guaranteed money for 2026. Arizona is on the hook for that, as well as additional money from bonuses already paid, leading to the $54.7 million dead cap charge.

Ryan had been the longtime face of the Falcons when the team traded him to Indianapolis in 2022 after the relationship soured when the team made a run at acquiring Deshaun Watson.

Getting rid of Ryan came at a cost as the team had repeatedly pushed money from the five-year, $150 million extension he signed in 2018 into the future and had to account for it all in 2022.

After reaching the divisional round in the 2022 playoffs, the Giants rewarded Jones with a four-year, $160 million contract to keep him off the free agent market and used the franchise tag on star running back Saquon Barkley.

Both were gone in less than two years, with Barkley signing with Philadelphia the following offseason and leading the Eagles to a Super Bowl title, while Jones was cut midway through his second season. Jones had earned $36 million in 2024 at the time he was cut, with $11.1 million more hitting the cap as dead money, along with $22.2 million last season.

___

AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/NFL