NFL Trade Rumors
Today we continue our six-part series analyzing the teams with the most work ahead in 2026 to get under the salary cap. Over The Cap has a neat metric called effective cap space, which is basically a projection of spending power for each team in 2026. It measures how much cap space teams are projected to have after accounting for signing draft picks and filling out a full roster. Per OTC, six teams have deficits of $25 million or more in effective cap space in 2026.
That means these six teams have some work to do to balance the budget. The NFL mandates all teams stay below the salary cap at all times, so these six teams have to get back in the black by the time the 2026 league year starts in March. That means each squad has some decisions to make, and those implications are what we’re exploring in this series.
The news cycle has obliged this week, with the Miami Dolphins up next just after they were eliminated from the playoffs and made the massive decision to bench QB Tua Tagovailoa. It’s an omen of further changes to come this offseason.
While the Dolphins don’t have a deficit as big as some of the other teams we’ve covered, there’s a case to be made they’re worse off financially than most of the teams ahead of them given the spate of bad contracts they’re going to be paying for. Tagovailoa is top of the list. In a world where he continued to develop into the franchise starter the team paid him to be, a restructure of his $54 million guaranteed salary would have pretty much wiped out Miami’s salary cap deficit.
Instead, they have few good options going forward with Tagovailoa now that he’s been benched. Tagovailoa is due $54 million in fully guaranteed salary next year, plus another $3 million of his 2027 salary will become guaranteed in mid-March, putting the Dolphins on the hook for $57 million if he is on the team in 2026. Releasing him triggers an NFL-record $99.2 million in dead money, and even a June 1 designation to spread that over two seasons leaves $67.4 million for Tagovailoa on the 2026 cap.
That’s not good news for a team that already has more than $30 million in dead money on the books in 2026 and will be adding tens of millions to that total this offseason. One way or another, a rebuild and a reckoning is due for the Dolphins next year. But it will be interesting to see if there’s a clash between a new general manager and HC Mike McDaniel, who will be under intense pressure if he avoids being fired for the results of this season.
There’s no getting around the fact that the Dolphins have to get younger. The core of the team...
