Tua Tagovailoa still has time to turn things around.
But early in the 2025 NFL regular season, the Miami Dolphins' quarterback has not exactly looked like a star amid Miami's 0-2 start.
And if it continues in this direction, the Dolphins will have a real problem.
That's because they paid Tagovailoa huge money last summer, and now, it'd cost a ton to get rid of him.
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It'd cost the Dolphins $79.2 million in dead cap space to cut Tagovailoa right now, wrote ESPN's Matt Miller on X.
Tagovailoa signed a four-year, $212 million contract extension in the summer of 2024.
He's in the first of the four years of that actual extension, and he's earning $25 million in base salary for the 2025 season.
Tua is due to make $39 million in base salary in 2026, then $31 million in 2027 and $41.4 million in 2028.
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There's an out in his contract before the 2027 season that would result in $34.8 million in dead money, which is really the first realistic time something like that could happen. But that's two years down the road.
Until then, Tagovailoa seems locked into his QB1 role in Miami.
The Dolphins have Zach Wilson and Quinn Ewers as backups, but it doesn't make sense for them to pay Tagovailoa that much money to sit on the bench.
He's going to get a long leash to figure things out, whether he should or not.
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