The greatest Dolphins quarterback of all time believes his team needs a quarterback competition this season.
“You have to have competition at that position and I think that’s probably where the Dolphins have to go,” Marino told Mad Dog Sports Radio. “Just have competition there and see what that is. I’m not in the position to say it’s going to be free agency or the guys we have or whatever that may be, but I do know when you have competition at that position it’s going to make it better and better and that’s what the Dolphins need to do.”
The Dolphins owe Tua Tagovailoa $54 million guaranteed for the 2026 season, so it would be difficult for them to move on from him. Marino says he likes Tagovailoa as a person but doesn’t believe the new coaching staff is going to hand him the starting job.
“Excellent guy, human being, and he’s still on the roster, so you just don’t know right now — the new staff is coming in and they’ve got to evaluate everything,” Marino said. “Right now, Tua’s with us, he’s one of our quarterbacks, and that’s the way it’s gonna be.”
Tagovailoa may be a $54 million backup in Miami next season.
The Bears are bringing back a familiar face as their running backs coach.
Brad Biggs of the Chicago Tribune reports that they will hire Eric Studesville to fill that role on Ben Johnson’s staff. Eric Bieniemy was in that position in 2025, but left the team to return to the Chiefs as their offensive coordinator.
Studesville spent the last nine seasons on the Dolphins’ coaching staff. He was the running backs coach for that entire run and also held the titles of run game coordinator, co-offensive coordinator and associate head coach over that span.
This will be Studesville’s second stint in Chicago. He was also on their staff from 1997-2000 and served as their wide receivers coach for the final two seasons.
There was word last week that Nathaniel Hackett would be joining the Dolphins’ staff as their quarterbacks coach, but Miami is going to have to look in a different direction.
According to multiple reports, Hackett will instead be the offensive coordinator for the Cardinals. Hackett has a number of connections to Cardinals head coach Mike LaFleur.
Hackett worked as the Packers’ offensive coordinator under LaFleur’s brother Matt from 2019-2021. He moved on to a 15-game stint as the Broncos’ head coach in 2022 and then joined the Jets as their offensive coordinator for the next two seasons.
That job was available because Mike LaFleur was fired after two years running the offense on Robert Saleh’s staff. Hackett returned to Green Bay to serve as a defensive analyst for the 2025 season.
Hackett has also worked as an offensive coordinator for the Jaguars and Bills during his time in the NFL.
Bobby Slowik is new to the offensive coordinator role in Miami, but he’s not new to the team.
Slowik was the Dolphins’ senior passing game coordinator under Mike McDaniel in 2025 and he moved into his new role after Jeff Hafley was hired as the team’s new head coach. In a press conference on Wednesday, Slowik said “the bones are the same, the roots are the same” when asked how much his offense will resemble the one they ran with McDaniel before saying that it will evolve beyond where it was last year.
One key part of that evolution will be based on the quarterback position. Tua Tagovailoa was benched in favor of Quinn Ewers late in the regular season and his future with the team is unclear thanks to that change, the coaching change and his outsize salary cap number. Slowik complimented the “grace” that Tagovailoa showed after being benched and said he believes in the quarterback’s ability to rebound.
“Tua can absolutely bounce back,” Slowik said, via Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald.
If someone outside of Miami believes that’s the case, the Dolphins could move Tagovailoa and start Hafley’s run with a new face under center. The money — Tagovailoa is guaranteed $54 million in 2026 — will have to be worked out for that to happen and more clarity on where things are headed should develop in the coming weeks.
For years, the NFL has utilized a unique system of handling many potential legal claims made by non-players against the teams and/or the league. In this specific context, “unique” means “secret, rigged, kangaroo court of arbitration.”
All coaches and plenty of other team and league employees sign contracts that require them to submit any disputes to arbitration ultimately controlled by the Commissioner, who is hired and paid by the league and its teams. (And when the contract doesn’t do the trick, the league will resort to the NFL’s Constitution and Bylaws to argue that such matters can’t be resolved in open court.)
The practice has taken multiple hits over the past year, with high-profile rebukes from both the Nevada Supreme Court (as to Jon Gruden’s lawsuit against the NFL and the Commissioner) and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (as to Brian Flores’s lawsuit against the NFL, the Dolphins, the Giants, the Broncos, and the Texans).
Most recently, the NFL filed a petition for appeal to the United States Supreme Court in the Flores case, teeing up the question of whether the practice is legitimate under the Federal Arbitration Act. (The next step is for the Supreme Court to decide whether to even take the case.)
During Monday’s Super Bowl press conference, Jarrett Bell of USA Today asked Commissioner Roger Goodell for his response to the contention that he can’t be fair and impartial in resolving such disputes.
“Some of this is legal, Jarrett, which I’ll let the lawyers discuss, but I would just tell you from a broader standpoint, arbitration is a part of what we have between our clubs and the league and the Commissioner’s responsibility between individuals who are under contract, and the Commissioner’s role,” Goodell said. “So it is part of the Commissioner’s role, has been, and continues to be, and is an important element in getting resolution to issues so that we can move forward without unnecessary litigation. So, beyond that, I’ll leave it to the lawyers to go from there.”
The lawyers will argue in court that the practice is legally justified. But the Commissioner’s answer is clear. He’s basically saying “it was like that when I got here.”
The core question is whether any company should be allowed to compel arbitration of legal disputes to be resolved by, essentially, its CEO. Many American businesses use arbitration as an alternative to litigation. Nearly all of them designate an external arbitrator, with no ties to either side.
The NFL has persisted, for decades, in its belief that it’s proper for the Commissioner to preside over these disputes. It’s inherently impossible for the Commissioner to be truly fair and impartial, even if he’s trying to be. His bread is amply buttered by one of the parties to the dispute.
Judges routinely recuse themselves from any case that presents even the slightest possibility for an actual or perceived conflict of interest. Plenty of judges will step aside based on something as simple as knowing one of the parties socially.
So, no, the Commissioner cannot be fair and impartial. And the NFL shouldn’t want to put the Commissioner in that spot, if the league is interested in true justice being done.
The broader concern is that, if the league gets a license from the Supreme Court to handle legal disputes in this manner, other companies will decide to do the same thing, making it even harder for people whose rights have been violated to get a truly fair and impartial resolution to their grievances.
For the NFL, it’s not about justice. It’s about avoiding the costs of going to court, keeping potentially embarrassing facts from becoming public, and ensuring that, at the end of the day, The Shield will deflect any and all slings and arrows.
