Tua Contract Negotiations Start | Page 19 | FinHeaven - Miami Dolphins Forums

Tua Contract Negotiations Start

The Goat said:
I came very close to posting this exact clip in this thread earlier today.

This is my schtick. Stay off my lawn. ;)
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John Candy No GIF by Laff
 
Fin-Loco said:
Just going to leave the beneath for some on here to contemplate. Quite accurate.

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I don't hate on him, but there has been a point in each of the last two seasons where he was on pace for more than 35+ TDs. He was, in fact, leading the league in TD passes going into the second half of the season last year. As you can clearly see, he ended up with 29 TD passes. It's less about where he ended the season and more about how he had to take a complete detour in order to end up there as opposed to leading the league in the category.

And of course, in the end, it's all about winning the games. His team went from leading the division to being the wild card, and then to being a first round exit.

I simply expect even better from him, and at $55M/year we should all expect playoff wins. He's a very good QB we should hope to keep, but is keeping him going to hurt the rest of the roster?
 
AgentXof12 said:
I don't hate on him, but there has been a point in each of the last two seasons where he was on pace for more than 35+ TDs. He was, in fact, leading the league in TD passes going into the second half of the season last year. As you can clearly see, he ended up with 29 TD passes. It's less about where he ended the season and more about how he had to take a complete detour in order to end up there as opposed to leading the league in the category.

And of course, in the end, it's all about winning the games. His team went from leading the division to being the wild card, and then to being a first round exit.

I simply expect even better from him, and at $55M/year we should all expect playoff wins. He's a very good QB we should hope to keep, but is keeping him going to hurt the rest of the roster?
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Theres a few things going on in this post, first it is missing the hospital of injuries we incurred over the season and how that affected all sorts of facets of the team.

Second is the salary concept. Right now, this year, Tua is what, a 25mm cap hit? Max cap hit would be about 50mm per year on an expensive contract? This year we are swallowing roughly 30mm in dead cap because of "still" Byron Jones, soon to be Xavien Howard, Baker and a couple others. Next year Jones' 10mm comes off the books freeing up 10mm with no changes in roster. The following year, Howard's will come off. Point being, we already kind of have Tua's cap space baked in for the next couple years with our huge running dead caps falling off. We can keep the caliber of roster we are currently deploying while facing no real steep cap hits we are not already incurring.
 
E30M3 said:
Theres a few things going on in this post, first it is missing the hospital of injuries we incurred over the season and how that affected all sorts of facets of the team.

Second is the salary concept. Right now, this year, Tua is what, a 25mm cap hit? Max cap hit would be about 50mm per year on an expensive contract? This year we are swallowing roughly 30mm in dead cap because of "still" Byron Jones, soon to be Xavien Howard, Baker and a couple others. Next year Jones' 10mm comes off the books freeing up 10mm with no changes in roster. The following year, Howard's will come off. Point being, we already kind of have Tua's cap space baked in for the next couple years with our huge running dead caps falling off. We can keep the caliber of roster we are currently deploying while facing no real steep cap hits we are not already incurring.
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Those are some very solid points. One thing I would add to the point about freeing up dead cap space is that a Tua extension would seemingly reduce the margin for error in payroll management. Tua becomes a 50M risk (not a knock on him but just a fact) while the rest of the roster must be managed that much more successfully in order to maintain the same quality throughout.

I'd like to say that there will almost always be a Byron Jones and a Xavien Howard. A good baseball comparison of a guy who wasn't dead salary, became dead salary, and then returned to being productive is the controversial Marcell Ozuna (Braves). He's a perfect illustration of how a really productive guy becomes dead weight but really is a productive player -- dead salary is an unavoidable fact of investing in athletes.

I don't see any way around it, though. We didn't draft a QB, and there's not really a young-ish option on the depth chart that I think we would be grooming to replace the current starter. Therefore, locking up Tua makes more sense.
 
Tua is good enough to win games. The biggest question in the oline. Can they keep tua from taking the big hits?

I don't think the phins did enough to improve the oline In 2024. We signed that center from tennesee another guard in free agency and the second round LT who many say is not ready to start this year.

Hope I'm wrong and they play well and stay healthy for a change.
 
AgentXof12 said:
Those are some very solid points. One thing I would add to the point about freeing up dead cap space is that a Tua extension would seemingly reduce the margin for error in payroll management. Tua becomes a 50M risk (not a knock on him but just a fact) while the rest of the roster must be managed that much more successfully in order to maintain the same quality throughout.

I'd like to say that there will almost always be a Byron Jones and a Xavien Howard. A good baseball comparison of a guy who wasn't dead salary, became dead salary, and then returned to being productive is the controversial Marcell Ozuna (Braves). He's a perfect illustration of how a really productive guy becomes dead weight but really is a productive player -- dead salary is an unavoidable fact of investing in athletes.

I don't see any way around it, though. We didn't draft a QB, and there's not really a young-ish option on the depth chart that I think we would be grooming to replace the current starter. Therefore, locking up Tua makes more sense.
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Absolutely!

In terms of the Jones and Howard contracts and moving forward, I don't think we have many contracts outside Hill's if we were to offramp immediately that would give us large 10mm hits per year should we exit them, so that's good. True, there will always be dead cap hits for contract exits, but not to the point of offsetting what we would be paying Tua.

One thing that is a little concerning is the contracts being given out recently as it appear we are giving out a lot more void options. Not in the post-june sense where we take multiple years of cap hits due to bad contracts being written for poor performance, but in the instant advancement that void year contracts contain. Previously, we were not handing these out like other teams had in the kick the can down the road situation, but it seems we are shifting toward that strategy now. We are a little late to the game comparatively, so that is a good thing as we have a couple years to start worrying about the hits, but they WILL come all the same.

I do believe this has been taken into account by Shore in the timing of all these items and that this year, solely this year, a contract with Tua MUST be made to thread the needle, where our large dead cap hits will fall off, alleviating some of Tua's salary, then the void year components may start kicking in. It's a tight rope, but the opportunity us there for Shore to hit a home run, albeit a small window.
 
It's probably worth peoples' time to compare the 2022 highlights with the 2023 highlights.

The offense looks far more polished and explosive in 2023 showing that we could see another step in 2024. Tua looked a lot more comfortable and seemed to push the ball downfield more regularly. Even though the overall production was similar, the connection between he and Tyreek seemed to really improve as well. They connected on a ton of deep balls.

I'm not worried about whether Tua can play at this point but rather if/how this offense will continue to evolve. It has come up short against good teams and the signs of trouble were there going all the way back to September of 2022 when the offense ultimately failed entirely when given the ball at the end of the Bills game (which Miami won). The defense essentially had to win that game twice late in the 4th quarter and it's one of the only examples of Miami winning against a big-time opponent.

Yes, the offense is explosive but we need to see the offense itself win these big games rather than be bailed out by a suffocating defense. The sad thing is, that same defense seemed to get worse as it laid down against both Buffalo & Baltimore in 2023. Still, the offense didn't do enough against Buffalo or KC in its final two games and we lost because of it.

When you have a supposedly great offense and you hold the Bills to 21, you should outscore them and win, especially playing at home. Likewise, you should not be outscored by 19 points in the Playoffs if you have a supposedly great offense.

You can't run from those facts. Unless Miami was starting a backup QB (which they weren't), there is no excuse in the world worth making.

The lone exceptions were the 2022 comeback against Baltimore (which is now ancient history) and the 2023 win over Dallas who allowed us to run up the gut on the final drive with our least explosive RB (Jeff Wilson Jr).



Yes, we're going to re-sign Tua and the terms are kind of beside the point. Either Tua continues to raise this offense up to new levels (which is worth any price) or you move on entirely (which could still happen in several years).

Bottom line, the Miami offense needs to lead this team in a way that it clearly has failed to do under any sort of real pressure up to this point.
 
phinsforlife said:
Why do people sound like they want tua to get the most money possible? Are people fans of tua or the team? If you are a fan of the team, you should want them to retain the player for the least amount of money possible. That means more money to add talent to the roster in other places, and a better team. Yet I get the sense there are many that are rooting for Tua over team?
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Whom are you referring to?
 
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