MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. – "What the heck are the Dolphins doing?" It's a question so baffling we spent two entire podcasts trying to answer it.
But on the first day of free agency, the Fins gave us a much better idea of their present and future plans. Oddly enough, it's not because of any new player(s) they signed. But it's what they did with a player they already had.
The Dolphins restructured Ryan Tannehill's contract on Wednesday. On the surface, it doesn't seem like a big deal: a lot of teams do this with players to free up immediate salary cap space without affecting the player's earnings.
But in Tannehill's case, it also virtually ensured that the Fins will stick with their current quarterback for the foreseeable future.
The catch with restructuring a deal like this is that it makes it very difficult to cut a player anytime soon. In Tannehill's case, his original contract made it relatively easy for the team to move on if they chose to do so. By converting much of his salary into a signing bonus (the restructuring), it spreads out the cap hit over the next few years. However, if they cut him during that time, the remaining signing bonus is accelerated onto that year's cap.
It may sound confusing, but all anyone really needs to know is that the team made a much larger future financial commitment to Tannehill for the sake of opening up 2018 salary cap space.
So what does that mean? For one, it means the Dolphins are going all in to "win now." They're freeing up that cap space for a reason, and it appears to be a way to surround Tannehill with the best possible talent to see how good this 2018 team can be.
Sounds good, right? Well it is IF it works.
It feels like we say this every year, but this truly is a "prove it" year for Tannehill (and everyone, really). The Fins have sacrificed future flexibility to give Tannehill the best team they can right now.
So what happens if he doesn't? Or if his knee isn't healed?
There's the gamble.
The team would no longer have the ability to easily release Tannehill. The cap hit would be a problem.
It doesn't mean they couldn't move on from him, but it would limit the amount of talent they could bring in around a new quarterback.
So what about the 2018 draft and all those reports of the team vetting every top quarterback available? This doesn't preclude them from drafting a QB, but that certainly wouldn't flow with the "win now" philosophy. Besides, it's becoming harder to envision any of the top QBs falling to the Fins at 11, so they'd likely need to trade up, which would take away more flexibility and potential to add to this year's team.
There are plenty of moves left to be made, but the vision is now clear: The Dolphins are going "all in" on 2018 and "all in" on Ryan Tannehill.
Will it pay off? Who knows? But at least we can answer the question: what the heck are the Dolphins doing?