The Dolphins are getting closer to making a decision about quarterback Tua Tagovailoa’s future with the franchise and they’ve made one about edge rusher Bradley Chubb.
According to multiple reports, the Dolphins will release Chubb. Unless the move is given a post-June 1 designation, the Dolphins will have nearly $24 million in dead money on the cap while realizing over $7.3 million in cap savings.
Chubb joined the Dolphins in a midseason trade in 2022 and had 22 sacks in 41 games for the team. He missed all of 2024 with a torn ACL, but returned to record 8.5 sacks for the team last season.
Once the move is official, Chubb will be free to sign with any team looking for some veteran help for their pass rush in 2026.
When former Dolphins coach Brian Flores filed his lawsuit against the NFL and multiple teams in February 2022, the claim of systemic and chronic racial discrimination made it a landmark attack against the league. Flores’s efforts have had, to date, a much more significant impact.
Through a series of rulings during a four-year war over the question of whether the claims of Flores, Steve Wilks, and Ray Horton will be resolved in open court or (as the league strongly prefers) arbitration controlled by the Commissioner, Flores and company have torn down the league’s longstanding method for forcing employee legal claims into a secret, rigged, kangaroo court.
The problem is simple. The league wants civil cases filed against it to be determined not by an independent party but by the league itself. Finally, independent judges with the power to do so are telling the NFL that it cannot do so.
“The court’s decision recognizes that an arbitration forum in which the defendant’s own chief executive gets to decide the case would strip employees of their rights under the law,” attorneys Douglas H. Wigdor and David E. Gottlieb said Friday, after the latest decision scrapping the league’s practices. “It is long overdue for the NFL to recognize this and finally provide a fair, neutral and transparent forum for these issues to be addressed.”
And that’s really the next step. Instead of maintaining its current Hail Mary pass to the U.S. Supreme Court, the NFL should do the right thing and abandon the heavy-handed practice of insisting that lawsuits filed against the league be presided over by the Commissioner.
The Commissioner, who recently defended the practice by saying, essentially, “it was like that when I got here,” shouldn’t want to do it. It’s a hopeless and irreconcilable conflict of interest.
Few if any other companies attempt to stack the deck in such a laughable, third world, banana republic way. Most companies realize it’s more than sufficient to force employees into arbitration handled by one of the various companies (like the American Arbitration Association) that exist for that purpose.
It’s still a much better forum for corporate America than the traditional judge-and-jury process. Especially since the various companies that provide arbitration services tend to skew toward the interests of the businesses that are responsible for creating the system that funnels them so much business.
But that’s not good enough for the NFL. Its longstanding approach to arbitration is proof positive that it wants to completely control anything and everything it can.
Finally, the NFL is losing control over legal claims made by non-players. The consequences sweep far beyond Flores, Wilks, and Horton. Every other team and league employee who is compelled to agree to the arbitration term in their contracts now have a pathway to avoiding a fundamentally unfair and un-American approach to justice.
For that reason, maybe it will be useful for the league to keep pushing its appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Assuming that at least five of the nine justices of the highest court in the country see this game for what it is, the end result will be a published opinion that becomes the law of the land as to the league, all of its teams, and every current and future employee who have no choice but to agree to a contract that forces them to allow the Commissioner to have final say over any and all grievances they ever may pursue.
The Dolphins have announced their 2026 coaching staff.
New head coach Jeff Hafley’s staff will be topped by offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik, defensive coordinator Sean Duggan, and special teams coordinator Chris Tabor. Slowik was on Miami’s staff last season as their senior pass game coordinator.
The staff will also include five other coaches who were on Mike McDaniel’s final staff. run game coordinator/senior defensive assistant Joe Barry, defensive line coach Austin Clark, assistant tight ends coach Lemuel Jeanpierre, assistant wide receivers coach Jonathan Krause, and assistant defensive backs/nickels coach DeShawn Shead.
The rest of the offensive coaches are assistant offensive line coach Matt Applebaum, running backs coach Ladell Betts, quarterbacks coach Bush Hamdan, tight ends coach Ron Middleton, passing game coordinator Kevin Patullo, wide receivers coach Tyke Tolbert, offensive assistant Leander Wallace, and offensive line coach Zach Yenser. Defensive backs coach/cornerbacks Jahmile Addae, assistant linebackers coach Wendel Davis, defensive quality control coach Siriki Diabate, defensive backs coach/passing game coordinator Ryan Downard, assistant defensive line coach Chuka Ndulue, and linebackers coach Al Washington.
Assistant special teams coach Brock Olivo and special teams assistant Darius Eubanks make up the rest of the staff.
The NFL’s secret, rigged, kangaroo court is on life support.
In the lawsuit filed four years ago by former Dolphins coach Brian Flores, the presiding judge has reversed a prior order sending some of the claims to arbitration. Now, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has concluded that all claims will be litigated in open court.
The ruling means that the Flores claims against the NFL, the Dolphins, the Giants, the Broncos, and the Texans will be handled in court, not arbitration. It also applies to the claims made by Steve Wilks against the Cardinals, and by Ray Horton against the Titans.
Friday’s decision flows from last year’s ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which denied arbitration as to the remaining Flores claims based on the NFL’s insistence that Commissioner Roger Goodell control the process. That same “fatal flaw” (as Judge Valerie Caproni described it) impacts all efforts to compel arbitration.
The league will undoubtedly fight the result. Although Goodell defended the practice during last week’s Super Bowl press conference, it is fundamentally unfair for the person hired and paid by the teams to be resolving legal claims made against his employers. No one in that position can be fair and impartial.
The NFL hates external oversight. It wants to control its business, and it hopes to keep any dirty laundry tightly under wraps.
The league previously filed a petition for appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on the question of whether the arbitration requirement is legitimate. Whatever the final outcome, it’s long overdue that the highest court in the country examine and resolve whether it’s appropriate for any organization to require employees to submit their legal claims not to an independent party but to the boss.
As the clock ticks toward the start of the new league year on March 11, the Dolphins will soon be making a decision about the future of quarterback Tua Tagovailoa.
If they haven’t already decided to keep him as the starter, chances are they’re only thinking about how they’re going to extricate themselves from his contract.
At a fan event on Thursday night, G.M. Jon-Eric Sullivan and coach Jeff Hafley were asked about the quarterback situation, Tua Tagovailoa’s status, and whether the Dolphins will be looking at other quarterbacks in the draft.
“Of course, we’ll be looking at other quarterbacks in this draft,” Sullivan said, to a round of applause. “And every draft hereafter. But, look, I’ve had — Tua was in my office the other day, if I’m being perfectly frank. We had a great conversation. Tua has been a very good player in this league. He’s done a lot of really good things for the Miami Dolphins. You guys should be proud to have him and having had him.
“I don’t know what the future holds right now, and I told Tua that. We’re working through some things. What I can tell you is that we’re gonna infuse competition into that room, whether Tua is part of the room, whether he’s not part of the room. We’re gonna infuse competition into that room, like we will do in every other position. Tua knows where we are. We’ve been very honest and upfront, and Tua also knows that he will be the first to know when we make a decision. So if Tua is the first to know, you guys can’t be the first to know, and I know that you respect and appreciate that.
“But we’re getting close to a decision. And when we do, we’ll let Tua know whether he’s gonna be part of this or not, and we’ll move forward. But you can rest assured that we will add competition to that room, one way or the other, to make it the best that we can.”
Said Hafley after Sullivan finished: “Yeah, I don’t think I need to add anything.”
Whatever they do, the Dolphins are stuck. They owe Tua $54 million for 2026, fully guaranteed. If they cut him, he’ll leave behind $99 million in cap charges that would most likely be divided over two seasons.
A trade is possible, but they’d have to pay a large amount of the guaranteed salary in order to make it happen. In the end, the Dolphins may have to do a Brock Osweiler-style deal, in which they give someone a draft pick or two in order to eat some of the cash and cap space.
Of course, the Dolphins also could just keep him. They have to pay him; they don’t have to play him. Given everything that has happened over the past six seasons, it would be awkward to do that — especially with a new regime trying to turn the page.
However it goes, it seems as if the Dolphins are dealing less with the question of whether he’ll return and more with the challenge of how to engineer his exit, thanks to a market-level contract former G.M. Chris Grier never should have paid.
