Tua's ride is over: Dolphins staring down an expensive divorce as they turn -- for now -- to Quinn Ewers

After five-plus years in the starting role, the Miami Dolphins have benched starting quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, CBS Sports lead NFL insider Jonathan Jones confirmed on Wednesday. Tagovailoa will be replaced under center by seventh-round rookie Quinn Ewers. 

Tagovailoa struggled badly during the 2025 season, throwing a league-leading 15 interceptions while averaging just 6.9 yards per attempt and posting the lowest QBR of his career. It's been a precipitous fall for Tagovailoa, who in 2023 led the NFL in yards per attempt, touchdown rate and passer rating, and in 2023 led the league in passing yards. 

He has dealt with concussion issues and other various injuries throughout his career, and this season he often looked lost. His lack of arm strength limited what the Dolphins could do offensively, and his understandable reluctance to take hits inside or outside the pocket did as well. 

Coach Mike McDaniel was largely able to scheme around those issues for several years by leaning into Tagovailoa's quick release and processing ability, but that synergy broke down over the last couple years and collapsed this season after the Dolphins lost star wide receiver Tyreek Hill to injury. 

With Tagovailoa now replaced in his role, it's worth digging into some big-picture takeaways on what's next for both him and the Dolphins in 2025, 2026 and beyond.

The finances of a Tua release

This is the big consideration here, in all honestly. It is going to be incredibly hard for the Dolphins to fully move on from Tagovailoa, even if his time as the starter has come to an end. 

Tagovailoa has the league's sixth-largest average annual salary at $53.1 million, putting him behind only Dak Prescott, Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, Trevor Lawrence and Jordan Love. Tagovailoa has three years remaining on that deal, plus two void years tacked onto the end of it in order to spread out the cap hits.

According to Over the Cap, Tagovailoa is set to carry cap hits of $56.4 million in 2026, $53.4 million in 2027, $65.8 million in 2028 and $11.0 million in 2029. He has base salaries of $39 million in 2026, $31 million in 2027 and $41.4 million in 2028, though the 2027 and 2028 salaries are not guaranteed. 

On the third day of the league year in 2026 (i.e. next March), $3 million of the 2027 salary becomes guaranteed, while another $17 million becomes guaranteed in 2027. He also has roster bonuses of $5 million and $7 million in 2027 and 2028, respectively, though those are obviously not paid out of he is not on the roster. 

As ESPN's Bill Barnwell notes, Tagovailoa "does have $20 million in injury guarantees in 2027 that would trigger if he were unable to pass a physical then. But to avoid risking those triggering, the Dolphins would have to sit him through the entire 2026 season."

Here's where it gets complicated for the Dolphins. Because of the way his contract is structured, it might be prohibitively expensive for Miami to cut ties with him after the 2025 season. Again via Over the Cap, here are the salary cap implications of the various options the Dolphins have if they decide they want to move on this coming offseason.

Carrying a $99.2 million dead cap hit would come close to preventing the Dolphins from building out a roster for the 2026 season. A $67.4 million dead cap hit would perhaps do the same. Cutting him outright would seemingly be a near-impossibility, unless the Dolphins are willing to totally gut their roster and declare the 2026 season a full reset year. 

Trading him is far more beneficial financially, but it's hard to see a team being willing to make the move for Tagovailoa and carry his currently scheduled base salaries. The Dolphins may have to agree to cover some of that salary in order to get anybody to bite, and even then there might not be much in the way of a return coming their way, considering they just benched him in favor of Ewers, who was a seventh-round pick and one of the last quarterbacks selected in what was generally considered a weak QB class. 

Future team options for Tagovailoa

The options for Tagovailoa are probably slim. Again, he is being benched for a seventh-round rookie and has played the worst football of his career this year. He doesn't have elite traits that another team might want to be on, he's a significant injury risk and his base salaries and bonuses are not cheap. 

Trading for him at a $39 million cap hit in 2026 would still place him in the top half of the league in terms of cap hit, and that's before we account for his roster and option bonuses, as well as the likely restructures or extensions that will dramatically decrease the cap hits of players like Prescott, Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson and Jared Goff, and the fact that players like Kirk Cousins could be released. Tagovailoa's cap hit could wind up around the top 10 in the league, even without accounting for his prorated signing bonuses. 

There are two possibilities if he ends up staying in Miami because the Dolphins feel it would be too damaging to their roster to move on from him. The first is that he resumes his starting role and the Dolphins try to see if the time off at the end of this season benefits him. That feels relatively unlikely. If they had designs on him starting any more games for them, they probably wouldn't be benching him in favor of Ewers.

The second is that he stays on as a highly paid backup to some other quarterback, like Cousins did with the Falcons this year, so that they don't have to incur that traumatic cap damage but also don't have to worry as much about triggering his injury guarantees. That would still be damaging, cap-wise, but it would also give the Dolphins a solid-enough backup to whomever they decide to start, just as Cousins did for the Falcons this season.

As far as other teams looking for quarterback help this offseason, the options could range from very few to quite a number of teams. 

The most likely candidates are probably the Jets, Raiders and Cardinals, though there are reasons to believe each of those teams wouldn't necessarily be interested in Tagovailoa. The Jets and Raiders could be picking near the top of the draft and more interested in guys like Fernando Mendoza, Dante Moore or whomever else enters the draft, and they both went with bridge quarterbacks this season that didn't work out. And if the Cardinals wanted a somewhat-limited veteran, they'd probably just stick with Kyler Murray. 

Elsewhere, teams like the Vikings, Panthers, Colts, Browns, Steelers and Rams could be in the quarterback market for various reasons. The Vikings and Panthers probably will want to bring in someone to compete with J.J. McCarthy and Bryce Young, respectively, or else be their backup. But Tagovailoa would be a really expensive option for that role unless the Dolphins covered a significant portion of his salary. 

The Colts could get interested depending on how Daniel Jones' recovery from his Achilles tear is going, but again, the salary could be prohibitive and it feels like they might prefer a quarterback who is more consistent and less susceptible to injury. The Browns are probably out because they still have to carry Deshaun Watson's massive cap hit and it would be ridiculous to pay two quarterbacks that much money. 

Pittsburgh and L.A. could be in the mix if Aaron Rodgers and/or Matthew Stafford retire. Playing in a Sean McVay/Kyle Shanahan style system is probably still the best option for Tagovailoa given his limitations.

Future QB options for the Dolphins

There are two in-house options for the Dolphins next season: give Tagovailoa his job back, or leave it to Ewers if he impresses down the stretch of the season. Unless Ewers goes off, though, neither of those options seems all that likely. 

The Dolphins could pursue veteran options like Murray, Cousins, Geno Smith, Jacoby Brissett, Jameis Winston or Mac Jones in either free agency or a trade. I'd personally consider a trade for Jones the most likely and perhaps most attractive of those options, especially if McDaniel is still the coach next season. The connection to the 49ers and the fit in the offense make him an option that makes some degree of sense. Someone like Brissett or Winston could be attractive as a bridge option as well, while Cousins and Smith are lesser options toward the end of their respective careers.

Younger quarterbacks like Anthony Richardson could be available as potential second-draft reclamation projects, though we don't know if that's the case. Or maybe the Dolphins could pursue a backup who has shown flashes in the preseason, like the Eagles' Tanner McKee or someone else along those lines. 

Then there's the draft. Miami is not going to be in position to get one of the top prospects in this class unless it is willing to surrender significant draft capital in order to trade up. That leaves players like Mendoza, Moore (if he enters) and Ty Simpson (same) potentially unavailable to the Dolphins. Perhaps they can get in on someone like Brendan Sorsby or Darian Mensah if they declare for the draft, or maybe one of the older prospects like Carson Beck or John Mateer could be attractive on Day 2.

The Dolphins might be best off going with a bridge player and then taking a swing in the 2027 draft, when players like Arch Manning, Julian Sayin, LaNorris Sellers, Moore (if he stays in school), Simpson (same), Sorsby (same), Mensah (same), CJ Carr, DJ Lagway, Dylan Raiola and more could be available.

What you need to know about Quinn Ewers

Ewers was seen as a generational quarterback prospect out of high school, ranking as the No. 1 recruit in the class of 2021 per 247Sports -- even after reclassifying up from the 2022 in order to enroll early at Ohio State to take advantage of new Name, Image and Likeness laws.

"He was the best thrower of the ball at the high school level that I had seen, and to this day, he is the best pure thrower in high school I've ever seen," 247Sports national scouting analyst Gabe Brooks said. "There's something about the way he threw, when you see it live there on field level, it's almost like on the back half of throws, velocity was increasing. It's like he had late life on throws, kind of in the same way that you might say a pitcher has late life on a pitch. It was so effortless."

After backing up C.J. Stroud as a redshirt freshman, Ewers transferred from Ohio State to Texas (who he had originally committed to as a high schooler), where he started for three seasons, throwing for 9,128 yards, 68 touchdowns and 24 interceptions while posting a 27-9 record. Coming out of college, CBS Sports senior writer Dave Richard provided the following scouting report:

"Ewers has traits that could help him navigate an NFL offense in due time, but the lack of arm strength and accuracy beyond 10 yards will not only limit what an offense can do around him but better set up a defense to force some turnovers," Richard wrote. "Tack on a lack of consistency when it comes to dealing with the pass rush, and the one-time top prospect of the nation might only elevate to being a quality backup who could pick up wins if a starter misses a few games."

Ewers ultimately dropped into the seventh round of the draft, where the Dolphins selected him at No. 231 overall. That surprised NFL Draft analysts as well as Texas coach Steve Sarkisian, following three seasons as the starter in Austin that saw him lead Texas back to national prominence and consecutive College Football Playoff appearances.

"All of us wish he would have gotten drafted higher," Sarkisian said. "But at the end of the day if I could have picked a place that I think is a great fit for him, I think Miami is a great fit. Systematically what Coach McDaniel does is if not exactly the same, very similar to what we do. So there's going to be a level of comfort for him of style of play."

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