The Atlanta Falcons traded for quarterback Kirk Cousins in March and signed him to a four-year, $180 million contract. This offseason, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers gave quarterback Baker Mayfield a three-year, $100 million contract extension, and the Detroit Lions topped those with a four-year, $212 million contract extension for quarterback Jared Goff.
Meanwhile, the Miami Dolphins continue to work on a contract extension for their quarterback, Tua Tagovailoa.
“I’m not blind to people that are in my position that are getting paid,” Tagovailoa said on Tuesday. “Am I concerned about it? I’m not concerned about it. But there’s a lot of discussion that we’ve had that we just are trying to move that thing into the right direction where we can both be happy.”
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Tagovailoa is scheduled to play the 2024 season on the fifth-year option of his rookie contract, which Miami picked up last offseason. That would pay the former Alabama All-American $23.171 million. If Tagovailoa’s salary stays at that figure, 17 other quarterbacks would be paid more in 2024 than the NFL’s 2023 passing leader.
“I’ll tell you one thing: The market is the market,” Tagovailoa said. “If we didn’t have a market, then none of that would matter. It would just be an organizational thing. It didn’t matter if that guy got paid that because it’s up to the organization. So that’s what I would say – the market is the market. That’s it.”
When reporters tried to gauge Tagovailoa’s attitude toward the contract negotiations, he settled on the word “antsy” to describe his feelings.
Tagovailoa said it was difficult for him not to take the business side of football personally.
“For people that talk about business is different than personal, sure, I can agree to some extent,” Tagovailoa said. “But who you are as a person, for what you do business and personal, is who you are with how you do everything. That’s how I see it. That’s just how I look at it. And if not, if you can be two different people at once, hey, by all means you can do that. But to me, that’s just not how I am.”
Tagovailoa said he was “confident that a deal will get done.”
“I think there’s been a lot of progress at this point,” Tagovailoa said. “From where we started, there’s been a lot of progress. Now you can ask the other question: Then why aren’t we seeing an agreement? Well, that’s the tough part about it. That’s why it’s business. That’s why you’ve got one side and the other trying to work to meet in the middle.”
The Dolphins held the first day of their mandatory minicamp on Tuesday. Miami is scheduled to continue those practices on Wednesday and Thursday before breaking until training camp.
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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.