Extreme Makeover: Salary Cap Edition – Miami Dolphins

This is the fourth article in a six-part series looking at the teams who are currently projected to be $20 million or more in the red in cap space for 2024, and the path forward for them to get under the cap. 

The full list of teams includes: 

• New Orleans Saints: -$98.7 million
• Los Angeles Chargers: -$57.3 million
• Buffalo Bills: -$52.7 million
• Miami Dolphins: -$51.3 million
• Denver Broncos: -$26.8 million 
• Dallas Cowboys: -$21.4 million

While we don’t have a formal projection for the 2024 cap yet, it’s safe to say that number will end up north of $240 million, growing by more than $16 million for the second consecutive year.

Before we dive into the Dolphins, here are some quick salary cap-related notes and definitions, as this can be a complicated subject. 

• Salary cap: The cap is the maximum any NFL team can spend on player salaries. Essentially, every team gets the same pie and can choose how to split it up, with various accounting mechanisms to manipulate how much cap space is available in any given year. 
• Dead Money: A term for money that has already been paid to a player and will count against a team’s salary cap no matter what. Most of the time this comes from signing bonuses, either from when a deal is initially signed or from restructures. When a player is cut, all the dead money remaining on their contract accelerates to the current year. 
• Restructure: An accounting trick teams can use to manage the cap in a given year. Signing bonus money is always prorated (spread equally) over the remaining years of a contract. That means teams can convert all but the minimum of a player’s base salary to a signing bonus and reduce the cap hit at the expense of increasing dead money in future years. 
• June 1 designation: Another accounting trick for teams — after June 1 when a player is cut the dead money is split over two years instead of all accelerating to the current year. Teams can designate two players per year as “June 1 cuts” and cut them before that date without the dead money hit, although they don’t get the resulting cap savings until after that date either. 
• Void years: Essentially “dummy” years that are added onto a deal, usually to help spread out the cap hits with restructures. They are not actual contract years that teams or players are required to fulfill. 

If you’re a visual learner like me, Over The Cap’s team cap calculator is a handy little tool to play around with and get a sense of how all of these terms and numbers shake out in real life. I leaned on it heavily when breaking down the cap situations and path forward for these teams. 

With the homework out of the way, let’s get into it…

Miami Dolphins: -$51.3 million

There’s always a lot of fun to be had in Miami, but this fall in particular has been a blast for the Dolphins. The offense is putting up points in bunches with the fastest skill position group in football and a head coach in Mike McDaniel who is surfing on the cutting edge of offensive innovation in the NFL right now. Dolphins QB Tua Tagovailoa has stayed healthy and the defense has improved leaps and bounds. At 10-4, the Dolphins are still in the mix to secure the No. 1 seed and make a deep playoff run. 

The future is much more fraught. The Dolphins will be hard-pressed to keep this team together with a long list of pending free agents and a cap deficit of more than $50 million in 2024. There’s also a lucrative contract extension for Tagovailoa to consider which will limit Miami’s financial flexibility even further in the future. 

These are champagne problems to a degree, as the stars that make the Dolphins’ roster top-heavy are some of their biggest contributors on the field at this point and a big reason why they’re a good team. The NFL is designed to pull everyone to the middle, though, either up or down. To stay on top, the onus will be on Dolphins GM Chris Grier to continue to make wise decisions with how the Dolphins allocate their free agency dollars and draft picks.

Balancing The Top Of The Roster

As noted above, the Dolphins’ roster is top-heavy. There are six players with cap hits north of $20 million in 2024 — Tagovailoa, WR Tyreek Hill, CB Jalen Ramsey, OLB Bradley Chubb, LT Terron Armstead and CB Xavien Howard. That’s more than half of the projected cap on just six players, leaving the other half for the other 47 players the Dolphins need to fill out the roster. 

Obviously all these players won’t stay at their current cap hits and Miami will probably restructure a lot of money into the future. Hill, Ramsey and Chubb already all have guaranteed base salaries in 2024, which often makes it easier for teams to justify doing restructures. No matter what, they’ll be on the hook for the money, so it’s just a question of whether they want to pay it all against the cap this year or spread it out in the future. 

Hill and Ramsey will both be in their age-30 season in 2024, but both have been playing at a high level which makes the Dolphins more likely to overlook any concerns about committing more money to players on the other side of 30. Chubb will be 28 and has taken his game to another level this season, so the Dolphins shouldn’t have any reservations about restructuring him either. In total, Miami would create $44.5 million in savings by restructuring these three players. 

Should Hill and Ramsey crater in 2024, the Dolphins still would have some options. Here’s what the potential outs in their contract in 2025 would look like with or without restructures this offseason: 

As you can see, while the dead money hits would be significantly higher, the Dolphins would still have enough flexibility to get out of either contract if it aged poorly. Both Howard and Armstead should serve as cautionary tales of how that outcome shouldn’t be dismissed. Miami restructured both contracts this past offseason to create space, and that will impact how they have to approach things this spring. 

Realistically the Dolphins have not been getting the level of production they need from Howard to justify his current $25.9 million cap hit in 2024. In my opinion, there is a strong likelihood that Howard is cut this offseason, the question is just how the Dolphins want to do it. An outright release would save $2.8 million in cap space in 2024 and get Howard completely off their books starting in 2025. 

However, if Miami used a June 1 designation it would give them an $18.5 million influx of cap space to use for late-summer and in-season moves, at the cost of $15.7 million in dead money still on their cap in 2025. My hunch is the Dolphins will value that extra 2024 cap space highly as they seek to maximize their current window to compete. 

Armstead’s situation is more complicated. When he’s healthy enough to play, Armstead remains an impact lineman. The catch is just that he continues to get banged up, which is something the Dolphins knew when they signed him in free agency. He has played just seven of 14 possible games so far this season and has still not played a full season in his career. 

Cutting Armstead isn’t any kind of practical consideration. Not only is he a top-ten tackle when healthy, but moving on without a June 1 designation would actually cost Miami cap space this upcoming offseason. It might not be prudent to restructure his contract, however. Though it would save $8 million in cap space this year, it would inhibit the Dolphins’ flexibility to move on from him if necessary in 2025 when he’ll be 34 years old. 

Building A Budget

Restructuring Hill, Ramsey and Chubb would put Miami in the black and making Howard a June 1 cut would provide an ample in-season budget. The Dolphins need to do a little more work to have cash to spend this offseason to upgrade the roster, however.

Releasing OLB Emmanuel Ogbah would save $13.8 million while releasing LB Jerome Baker would save another $9.9 million. Ogbah is just a rotational player at this point, so that’s an easy decision. Baker is an okay player but it makes sense for Miami to explore getting more bang for their buck. 

Along with the other moves, this would put the Dolphins at about $17 million as a free agency or trade budget. They could add another $11 million by restructuring DL Zach Sieler for $4.7 million and cutting RB Jeff Wilson ($3 million savings) and RB Keion Crossen ($3.2 million). Sieler’s 2024 salary is already guaranteed, while neither Wilson nor Crossen have roles that couldn’t be filled by a minimum-salary veteran or rookie. 

That gives the Dolphins in the neighborhood of $28 million to address needs. It’s not nothing, but it’s also not a substantial amount. Right now it would rank 19th in the NFL for 2024 but lower once other teams make their cap-saving moves. A significant chunk of Miami’s budget will likely go toward trying to keep as many pending free agents as possible. It’s a lengthy list: 

• DT Christian Wilkins
• C Connor McGovern
• G Robert Hunt
• LB Andrew Van Ginkel
• DT Raekwon Davis
• OL Isaiah Wynn
• S Brandon Jones
• CB Nik Needham
• WR Braxton Berrios
• P Jake Bailey

More than likely, the Dolphins will have to let a few of those players go as they don’t have the budget to keep everyone, at least not at market value.

The biggest consideration for them will be a deal for a player not on this list. 2024 will be the final year of Tagovailoa’s rookie contract after Miami picked up his fifth-year option this past offseason. He’s owed $23.171 million fully guaranteed and an extension would seemingly be one of the Dolphins’ top priorities this offseason. 

Miami has done nothing but affirm confidence in Tagovailoa since McDaniel took over, and Tagovailoa has answered one of the biggest questions the detractors had about him by staying healthy this season. It’s still fair to wonder what kind of contract the Dolphins will feel comfortable forking over to Tagovailoa. As well as he runs McDaniels’ system, there’s no question he’s helped considerably by all the talent he’s surrounded by. The more he makes, the less money the Dolphins have to surround him with talent. 

Ultimately I think Tagovailoa will sign for somewhere between $40 and $50 million — and probably closer to the high side of that range than the low. Despite that gaudy total, the Dolphins will still have some flexibility to lower his 2024 cap hit by a few million depending on how they structure the deal. However, because the timing of these deals usually ends up in the late summer, that cap space is a little less valuable. Miami might prefer to eat more of Tagovailoa’s contract upfront, especially with the flexibility from making Howard a June 1 cut. 

Summing It Up

The good news for the Dolphins is that the bulk of the core of the team that is currently 10-4 should be back in 2024. They will have to say goodbye to some important players and some big names, but they should not lose anyone who is irreplaceable. 

The catch is that the Dolphins will have a narrow path to walk to improve this team to a point where it can get over the hump and seriously vie for a Super Bowl, assuming they don’t this year.