NFL contracts are a hard to understand and a very complicated topic to discuss. However, in my unprofessional opinion, some contracts are getting out of control, especially in the Quarterback market. All this does is make the Tua extension talks more complicated.
It’s been clear for months that both the Dolphins and Tua want to get a deal done, but for some reason, it is taking longer than originally expected, and it has to do with the outrageous market.
The problem with the quarterback market is that teams are giving away contracts to quarterbacks who don’t necessarily have the stats to back them up. This happens because most of these quarterbacks are decent or even good quarterbacks, but they are not great. And what happens is that they can just point to the most recent quarterback who got an extension and say, “I am better than him; give me a bigger contract,” and the team doesn’t want to tell him, “No you are not” because they don’t want to ruin their relationship with a quarterback that has played good or decent enough for them.
That’s why you have a quarterback like Daniel Jones, who had one decent year and suddenly got a huge contract as if he is a top 10 quarterback when he really can barely break into the top 20 in his best year; honestly, he is not even a good quarterback. And then you also have Trevor Lawrence, a very decent quarterback, but his stats are not that great, and he now has one of the biggest contracts in NFL history.
So now the Dolphins are in a complicated position, and it’s partially their fault. They shouldn’t have waited for other quarterbacks to sign extensions because now they have to pay Tua more than them. Tua is better than Trevor Lawrence, so how will you offer him less money than he does now?
The Dolphins seem not to want to offer the current market value, and it makes sense because the market is out of control, but at the same time, Tua deserves the market value. And that’s why things are so complicated.
I don’t think it’s necessarily Tua saying he is the best quarterback in the league, but his agent’s job is to get him a contract at the current market value, which is over $50M a year. In any case, Tua is one of the best quarterbacks in the league and deserves an extension, and he seems to be happy to stay in Miami.
So, now it’s the Dolphins’ job to figure out how to do it. The good thing is that Tua is not the type of player who would hold out because he didn’t get his contract yet, so even if the contract is not done by the beginning of the season, he will probably still play, and they will try to get it done during the season. He always says that he lets his agent focus on the contract while he focuses on football and gets updated on the matter once in a while.
I think the Dolphins should try to figure out a contract with a good incentive package that would be lucrative and attractive enough so that the guaranteed money doesn’t have to be so high. I think that’s how all contracts should be; at least a third of it should be incentive-based because we have seen what happens many times with fully guaranteed contracts and how players don’t necessarily perform up to par afterward.
Fully guaranteed contracts make no sense and remove a lot of the incentive to play and compete. They could also figure out how most of the incentives are reachable so he knows he will most likely get that money.
These big quarterback contracts are destroying many teams, and hopefully, it doesn’t happen to the Dolphins. The Cowboys, for example, their cap hit for Dak Prescot’s contract is massive and really affected their free agency this off-season. I do believe the Dolphins and Tua’s agent will figure something out soon, and I sure hope they do. If I had to guess, the Dolphins would end up paying the current market value, even if some reports were saying that they weren’t willing to. I am not an expert in this topic, but Tua needs to be a fin for life and the Dolphins’ have to make it happen.
