I’m Leaving ” Tua Tagovailoa finally accepted $112M contract to depart from Miami Dolphins

Tackling Some Tua Questions: Is the Team Disrespecting Him?

The Miami Dolphins and their starting quarterback have yet to produce a contract extension that seemed a foregone conclusion at the start of the offseason

We are now less than two weeks until Miami Dolphins veterans report for the start of training camp and, as you probably know, quarterback Tua Tagovailoa remains without a contract extension.

The topic of Tua and his extension has been discussed, rediscussed, re-rediscussed and perhaps overdiscussed throughout the offseason, hitting a high point (or maybe low point) after the quarterback’s famous “The market is the market” statement following a minicamp practice.

The latest — or one of the latest — angles to the whole conversation centers around the idea that the Dolphins are “disrespecting, insulting” Tua by not having done whatever was necessary to already have gotten him that extension. Those were the exact words used in a headline for a column by longtime Miami Herald columnist Greg Cote, the headline adding the phrase “contract debacle.”

But is it really disrespectful? Insulting? A debacle?

Or maybe is it conducting business with the entire organization’s well-being in mind, as opposed to making sure one specific player is being taken care of?

Is it disrespectful for Tua to not have accepted already what the Dolphins have offered or is it good business on his part to try to get the best deal possible?

If the answer to the previous question is B, then why is not OK for the Dolphins to try to work out the best deal possible from an organizational standpoint while at the same time trying to satisfy Tua’s demands as much as possible?

And if you’re pointing to the Detroit Lions and Jacksonville Jaguars as an example of two teams that took care of their quarterback and suggesting the Dolphins are wrong for not following suit, does that mean the Dolphins have to operate like every other NFL franchise regardless of circumstance?

The Dolphins were kind of in a similar situation last year with Christian Wilkins and there were some murmurs about the team not doing right by him, but nothing even remotely within the same stratosphere as what’s going now with Tua. The position of the player certainly plays a big role in that, but were the Dolphins out-and-out wrong for adopting the position they did with Wilkins?

Without even making a judgment call here, even if you want to side with the idea the Dolphins are doing Tua wrong, it’s not a slam dunk.

If you want to talk “disrespectful,” wouldn’t it be more so for the team to ask tackle Terron Armstead to take a pay cut this offseason? Or how about drastically chopping wide receiver Albert Wilson’s salary from $9.48 million to $3 million plus $1 million in incentives in 2020 — after he had worked his way back from a serious hip injury?

That, from here, is a lot more “disrespectful.” Wilson took the pay cut because he was going to get released without doing so, but he technically had a choice. Just like Tua technically has a choice right now of either accepting the Dolphins offer that has been made or playing on his fifth-year option or even holding in or holding out, though holding out is cost-prohibitive because of the new CBA.