The Miami Dolphins entered free agency needing a new starting quarterback, and lacking the cap space to pay one. That was the case despite the team clearing $22.8 million by releasing wide receiver Tyreek Hill last month, with an additional $7 million in savings coming from the eventual release of pass rusher Bradley Chubb. There just didn’t seem to be enough money for the team to be active in the open market. Miami’s last front office, helmed by former general manager Chris Grier, left the new regime, led by first-year GM Jon-Eric Sullivan, in deep shit from a salary cap perspective, and many assumed the new group would spend this first offseason digging their way out of it. 

When a team led by a new brain trust inherits a crappy roster and then immediately starts shedding salary, the safe assumption is that they’re preparing to tank. And before noon on the first day of the NFL’s legal tampering period, Miami couldn’t beat those allegations. After failing to garner any trade interest in quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, the team decided to release him for nothing except for a $99 million dead cap hit for the upcoming season. Moving on from Tagovailoa, who was benched last season and whose press conference missteps became a distraction, and resetting the vibes in the locker room may have been worth the cap penalty. They also traded safety Minkah Fitzpatrick to the Jets for a seventh-round pick—and though the 29-year-old may be past his prime, he’s still a very useful player who would fit in any defense. Sending him to a divisional rival in exchange for a ham sandwich and a conditional bag of chips is not a win-now move. But then Miami’s offseason took an interesting turn when the Dolphins gave quarterback Malik Willis a three-year, $67.5 million contract with $45 million in guarantees. Those are some round numbers for a passer who hasn’t played much in the NFL, and it’s not the kind of deal a team that’s actively trying to get worse would make. 

Coming off the incoherence of Grier’s nine years at the helm, it’d be understandable if Dolphins fans were triggered by these seemingly mixed messages. During Grier’s tenure, Miami tried the tanking thing but ended up winning too many games to earn the top pick in the draft. (In Brian Flores’s discrimination lawsuit against the NFL, he claimed that when he was the Dolphins head coach in 2019, team owner Stephen Ross offered to pay him $100,000 per loss in order to incentivize him to lose games, but he refused.) Miami also tried the “all in” approach after hiring Mike McDaniel as head coach in 2021, trading for several big-name players over the next few seasons, including Hill, Chubb, and Fitzpatrick. Those bold moves resulted in two trips to the playoffs and zero postseason wins or division titles. 

Those two extremes of roster construction are seemingly at odds, but there is a commonality between them: impatience. Tanking teams try to accelerate the process of getting bad enough to land a franchise-saving quarterback at the top of the draft. “All in” teams try to accelerate the process of going from good to great by trading away draft capital and giving up cap space for an injection of talent. The Dolphins failed at both, and now the new front office is taking a more patient approach. But before Sullivan can build up the team, he has to clean up the mess his predecessor left behind. These early moves aren’t signaling a tank or even a naive push for the playoffs; rather, they seem to be signs that Miami doesn’t want to repeat its recent mistakes. 

Cutting Hill would have been an appropriate move even if the Dolphins were closer to competing for a playoff spot. He just turned 32, he’s coming off two down seasons and a major injury, and the move cleared $22.8 million in cap space. Hill didn’t seem too happy in Miami over the past two years and was entering the final year of his contract, so he was probably fine with the move, too. Chubb, meanwhile, had a $31.2 million cap hit for the upcoming season. And while he’s a solid player, he collected just 8.5 total sacks over the last two seasons and moving on from him frees up an additional $7.3 million in cap space. There’s no question the Dolphins would have been better off from a financial standpoint by keeping Tagovailoa on the roster for one more year instead of taking on a record $99 million dead cap hit and a loss of $42.9 million in 2026 cap space, but releasing him shouldn’t hurt their on-field product. Tagovailoa was dreadful throughout the 2025 season and was eventually benched for rookie Quinn Ewers—a seventh-round pick who went on to outplay the veteran QB. Beyond the cap implications, these moves give the locker room a fresh start while not really moving the needle on how competitive this team will be next season compared to last.

The Willis signing is the big question mark in all of this, but that might not affect things much either. Willis was very productive in limited action as a backup for the Packers, but he played just 302 snaps in Green Bay and was sheltered by conservative, run-heavy game plans from coach Matt LaFleur. And during his first two NFL seasons in Tennessee, he took just 92 dropbacks and wasn’t good enough to beat out Will Levis in training camp entering his third season. There’s a wide range of potential outcomes for Willis in Miami, where under new offensive coordinator/play caller Bobby Slowik, the Dolphins will be installing a new version of Kyle Shanahan’s offense. There should be plenty of overlap with the offense Willis ran under LaFleur, who coached under Shanahan in previous stops. If Willis picks up where he left off in Green Bay—where he averaged 9.2 yards per dropback—this deal will be viewed as a steal in a year or two. But if he’s bad, the Dolphins can move on quickly and inexpensively. 

Willis got what is essentially a two-year, $45 million deal with a team option for a third year. That’s not a massive investment given that the salary cap is up over $300 million now. Willis’s deal will account for about 7.5 percent of that, which isn’t much more than the deal Indianapolis gave Daniel Jones (5 percent) last offseason before his redemption tour. Justin Fields is the only veteran starter from last season who’s making less money per year than Willis’s $22.5 million average. And when accounting for cap inflation, Fields’s $20 million annual salary is on par with what Willis got—and actually carries more long-term liability since the Jets included two void years on his deal. Fields will be on New York’s books through the 2029 season no matter what they do with his contract this offseason. If Miami moves on from Willis after 2027, he’ll be off the books completely. 

So the Willis deal won’t prohibit the Dolphins from searching for a long-term option at quarterback. And Sullivan doesn’t strike me as a general manager who is going to be content after making the 26-year-old his first big signing. 

“The quarterback position again is the most important position in sports in my opinion, certainly the most important position in football,” Sullivan said when he was introduced in January. “We’re going to invest in that position every year if we can. Now depending on where we are as a football team, it’ll be at different values, but we will draft quarterbacks every year, if not every other year because I think you have to.” 

The Dolphins may have guaranteed Willis $45 million over the next two years, but his position as Miami’s QB1 could be tenuous if Sullivan sticks with that strategy. That’s the antithesis of the thinking that convinced the last front office to double down on Tagovailoa and give him the four-year, $212 million contract that put the Dolphins in their current predicament. Miami was paying a steep premium for mediocre quarterback play. At least if they get mediocre play from Willis, they will have paid an appropriate price.