Miami Dolphins cap: Restructures and extension possibilities

The Miami Dolphins will need to find about $13 million to get under the salary cap by the start of free agency. They need more to be active.

Miami has 28 impending free agents and while some will not be re-signed, the Dolphins lack the money to be aggressive in free agency and that includes their own FAs.

How Miami creates cap space is as important this year as how they spend it. They will need to have money for their draft picks and operating money for the season. How much they need depends on what the Dolphins’ plans are for the off-season and whether or not Chris Grier wants to be aggressive.

The easiest way to save money is to restructure contracts by converting salaries into signing bonuses and guarantees. This will spread that portion of the deal over the life of the contract. It makes sense but could create problems in a future season.

Another way is to simply release high-priced players and while the Dolphins are not in a great position to save big chunks of change, they slowly pick away at their negative balance. The problem, because there is always a problem, releasing players means signing others to fill that void.

If we look at the Dolphins’ salary cap situation and current 2023 contracts, there isn’t a lot of room to save.

You almost have to be nit-picky with the roster and start at the bottom instead of the higher-paid veterans at the top. Why? Because those veterans will take up a lot of space and dead money with little return in savings.

Players like Lester Cotton can be released and save the team $1 million with no dead money. Easier to replace with minimum salaries off the street. There are not a lot of those players on the roster. For example, Blake Ferguson would save $1 million with no dead money but why would you replace him and could you for less with the same consistency? Not likely.

Trades would work but who do you trade? Miami’s roster is full of inflated contracts that other teams may not want to take on which would mean Miami eats portions of those contracts and still need to fill the roster.

Even players that could bring in a bit more, like the $3 million and change Miami could save by releasing Keion Crossen doesn’t make sense when you figure that Crossen was a big part of Miami’s defense last year given the injuries and is a developing player. Do you replace him to save $3 million? The Dolphins may actually have to make these types of moves.

Or, they can restructure the contracts of some of their veterans and save money while also keeping the position filled and not creating another hole.

The Miami Dolphins have veterans who can get more guaranteed money while saving the team cap space this year.

Players like Tyreek Hill, Bradley Chubb, and Terron Armstead, could help the team given they were signed last year in free agency. Their contracts are already ballooned and restructuring will only hurt the team in the future but it is possible should the Dolphins see longterm value.

Byron Jones makes a lot of sense for the Dolphins but the issue is that the Dolphins may not see him in their future plans let alone this year. Miami could save $9.3 million by restructuring Jones according to OvertheCap.com.

Using OverTheCap as a guide, the following players could save Miami significant money this year.

• Jerome Baker – $5.7 million
• Emmanuel Ogbah – $9.2 million
• Jason Sanders – $.17 million
• Cedrick Wilson – $2.9 million

Players like Xavien Howard would save less than $100k and many players will carry less than a $1 million savings.

Another way to get money easily is to extend some of the Dolphins’ players.

Christian Wilkins will count $10 million against the cap as he plays on the 5th year option. Miami could and frankly should, extend him this year. They would reduce his contract this year considerably and could easily draw up a team-friendly deal for the next five years. If there is a player that is a safe bet barring injury to retain his level of play, it’s Wilkins.

There are other names that could potentially get new deals to help the team.

• Zach Sieler – due to be an FA after the 2023 season.
• Raekwon Davis – due to be an FA after the 2023 season.

Then of course there is the Tua Tagovailoa conundrum. It is too soon to give him an extension and the Dolphins have yet to pick up his 5th year option. Miami will pay him almost $10 million this year, the final year of his contract. The issue with Tua isn’t his injury history it is the fact that he will command a large amount of money when he gets a new deal. So far, there are too many questions to touch his contract until after the season making his 5th year option the only real option and of course, that does nothing for this year’s cap.