Omar Kelly of the Sun-Sentinel reports that Dolphins receiver Mike Wallace has informed the team that he is not willing to renegotiate his contract and would instead prefer to test the free agent market.
Recent reports have said that the Dolphins are in the process of considering all options when it comes to Wallace, including making him available for trade.
If Miami were to go the route of releasing Wallace, they would almost certainly do it by March 10, when $3 million of his scheduled $9.85 million salary becomes guarantee. The problem for the Dolphins is that they would likely have to designate him as a post-June 1 release, seeing as they wouldn’t free up much cap space to use in free agency if they were to release him outright.
Wallace, 28, signed a five-year, $60 million contract that included $30 million guaranteed with Miami back in 2013, so it clearly disappointing that this is something being talked about just a few years into this agreement.
According to OverTheCap.com, releasing Wallace outright would free up $2.5 million in cap space next year, but would also create $9.6 million in dead money.
A June 1 release improves the Dolphins’ cap savings to $6.9 million and $5.2 million dead money.
However, trading Wallace would boost their cap saving to $5.5 million and reduce the dead money to $6.6 million, according to OTC’s cap calculator.
This season, Wallace caught 67 passses for 862 yards receiving and 10 touchdowns over the course of 16 games. Pro Football Focus has him rated as the N0. 53 receiver out of 110 qualifying players.
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