Tua Tagovailoa’s time as the starting quarterback of the Dolphins ended on a Monday night in December against the Steelers. Soon, we’ll know whether the Dolphins will be trading or releasing him.
The past errors in the handling of Tua’s contract don’t matter. Obviously, the Dolphins never should have swapped his fifth-year option in 2024 for a contract worth $53.1 million annually. They were bidding against themselves, and they won — and lost.
Now, the Dolphins owe him $54 million for 2026. They’ll absorb $99.2 million in dead-cap charges over 2026 and 2027 if he’s released. The only way to blunt that impact is to trade him. The only way to trade him is to attach assets to his contract. (His contract could be tucked into a broader trade in order to make it less obvious, like the Rams did when they added an extra first-round pick to the trade that brought Matthew Stafford to L.A. and unloaded Jared Goff’s remaining guarantees. It would be much more obvious this time around.)
The question moving forward is whether Tua will become the next first-round quarterback who thrives with another team.
His situation is different than folks like Sam Darnold, Baker Mayfield, and Geno Smith. Tua played well enough to get the team that drafted him to give him a a-market-is-the-market-level deal. In 2023, he started all 17 games and led the league in passing yardage (4,624). The prior season, he led the league in touchdown percentage (6.3), yards per attempt (8.9), and passer rating (105.5).
The knock has been that Tua has had too many head injuries, and that (as former teammate Xavien Howard said after the Week 1 game at Indianapolis in 2025) he reverts to “panic mode” when his first read isn’t open. As the 2025 season went on, he wasn’t sufficiently taking care of the ball. That eventually got him benched.
But Tua is hardly the only quarterback who can’t whip up chicken salad on the fly, or who has turnovers. And he’s good enough to play, for someone. Under the right circumstances, he could be as good as he was at his best in Miami.
The Jets need a quarterback. He’s 8-0 all-time against them, with a passer rating of 101.0. The Falcons need a quarterback, too. Tua torched them in Atlanta last season, with four touchdown passes in a 34-10 romp.
Look at Atlanta’s roster. Bijan Robinson. Drake London. Kyle Pitts Sr. The offensive line is good enough to buy Tua time. The defense has talent (the availability of James Pearce Jr. is currently up in the air). They finished in a three-way tie with the Panthers and Bucs last year, at 8-9. Put Tuta indoors for eight home games (the ninth will be played in Madrid) and two road games (New Orleans and Minnesota), and maybe he could thrive. (That said, there could be a few cold-weather games, since the Falcons will play in 2026 at Green Bay, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Washington.)
The Vikings are kicking tires on any/every available quarterback, too. They have nine indoor home games (including a visit from the Dolphins) and two road games in a dome at the Saints and Lions. (But, yes, there will be potential cold-weather contests at the Bears, Packers, Jets, and Patriots.)
With the Dolphins owing him $54 million in 2026, Tua could do a one-year, $1.3 million deal with a new team and stick the Dolphins for the $52.7 million balance. That makes him a low-risk, potential high-reward option. And if a coach is confident that he can scheme up plays that will allow Tua to find an open receiver quickly and to keep him from taking needless hits, he could do better than expected in his second NFL stop.
There’s still no guarantee it’ll happen in 2026. Because the Dolphins owe him so much money, they could keep him. It would be awkward, for both sides. But it’s possible. And the Dolphins could choose to keep him on the roster in the hopes that some team will eventually realize that: (1) it still needs a quarterback; and (2) it could do a lot worse than Tua Tagovailoa.
Sure, another $3 million (in 2027 salary) becomes fully guaranteed on Friday. But what’s another $3 million, when they already owe him $54 million?
Falcons Clips
The Falcons will let one of their pending restricted free agents hit the open market.
Per Mike Garafolo of NFL Media, Atlanta is not placing an RFA tender on defensive lineman Sam Roberts.
Roberts, 27, appeared in five games with one start for the Falcons in 2025. He recorded 18 total tackles with a sack, a tackle for loss, and two quarterback hits.
A Patriots sixth-round pick in 2022, Roberts has appeared in 20 career games with two starts for New England, Carolina, and Atlanta.
Veteran wide receiver Darnell Mooney is reportedly set to join the list of free agents around the league.
Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reports that the Falcons are planning to release Mooney. With a few days to go before the start of the new league year, the Falcons may try to see if a team is willing to trade for Mooney before they make anything official with his release.
Mooney is set to have a cap number of $18.42 million for the coming season, which won’t help the chances of generating any trade interest. The Falcons would eat $11 million of that as dead money unless they designate Mooney as a post-June 1 cut. Doing so would clear nearly $12 million of cap space, but the Falcons would not immediately be able to take advantage of that savings.
Mooney had 64 catches for 992 yards in his first year with the Falcons, but slipped to 32 catches for 443 yards during the 2025 season.
The Cardinals will release quarterback Kyler Murray next week. Where will he land?
DraftKings has the Vikings as the early favorites to sign the first overall pick in the 2019 draft, at -110.
The Jets are next at +175, with the Dolphins at +320 and the Browns at +450.
The Falcons, at +500, are one of the most intriguing options, given their talent elsewhere on offense. As mentioned over the weekend, however, new president of football operations Matt Ryan (a 6'5" former quarterback) will have to be content to ride with an undersized signal caller.
There’s a long shot to watch, at +7500: The Rams. They’ll likely need a replacement for Jimmy Garoppolo at No. 2 behind Matthew Stafford, and there’s an unverified (for now) rumor making the rounds that Stafford has already contacted Murray to make the case for coming to L.A.
Murray’s former head coach in Arizona, Kliff Kingsbury, is now a member of the Rams’ coaching staff. And Murray’s former Oklahoma teammate, Baker Mayfield, had a late 2022 cup of coffee with the Rams that may have helped launch his resurgence in Tampa.
The real question is whether Murray wants to play in 2026, or whether he’s content to take a step back for a year and lay the foundation for wherever he’ll be in 2027.
Either way, the clock is ticking (as it is for all of us). Murray turns 29 later this year. The high-end speed and acceleration will fade. At some point, he’ll need to transition to pocket passer if he hopes to keep playing deep into his 30s.
From 2015-24, the NFL saw five or more franchise tags placed on players each of those offseasons. A total of five tags were used the past two years.
The deadline to tag players in 2026 passed Tuesday at 4 p.m. ET.
Only three teams used a franchise tag, with Jets running back Breece Hall, Cowboys wide receiver George Pickens and Falcons tight end Kyle Pitts tagged as non-exclusive franchise players. In 2025, Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins and Chiefs offensive guard Trey Smith were the only players tagged.
The only other time two or fewer players were tagged was 1994, the first year of the franchise tag, when Pittsburgh tight end Eric Green and Vikings defensive tackle Henry Thomas received their team’s franchise tag.
The Colts placed the transition tag on quarterback Daniel Jones on Tuesday.
Teams will have until July 15 to work out a long-term deal with tagged players, or the players will play on the tag for 2026.
The NFL is a deadline-driven business. And an important annual deadline arrives today.
The two-week window for applying the franchise or transition tag closes at 4:00 p.m. ET on Tuesday.
There’s really no reason for a two-week period. All that matters is the end, not the beginning. And while there’s some value in applying the tag before the Scouting Combine as a way to short-circuit tampering efforts, only two teams put the word out before things got rolling in Indianapolis that key players would be off-limits — Falcons tight end Kyle Pitts Sr. and Cowboys receiver George Pickens.
Will there be more? Obviously, if any will happen, it will happen today.
The players to watch are Colts quarterback Daniel Jones (and, if they work out a deal with him today, Colts receiver Alec Pierce), Jets running back Breece Hall, and Bengals defensive end Trey Hendrickson.
If no additional tags are applied, it will be the second straight year with only two. And the two applied in 2025 were the fewest since 2006.
Time will tell. And the clock is ticking. We’ll know at 4:00 p.m. ET who is, and isn’t, blocked from the open market by the franchise or transition tag.
The Falcons will be playing in Madrid, Spain, in 2026.
The NFL announced today that the Falcons will be one of the participants in the previously announced Madrid game. It is expected to be a Falcons home game, and the Falcons will play eight games in Atlanta. NFC teams have nine home games in 2026.
The Falcons’ opponent has not been announced, but of their nine home opponents this year, the Lions, 49ers and Saints can be ruled out because they already have international games set for this season. Two of the Falcons’ 2026 home opponents, the Bears and Chiefs, have international marketing rights in Spain, so they would be natural choices to play there.
The game will be played at Bernabéu, home of soccer team Real Madrid. The date of the game has not been announced. It is expected to be a 9:30 a.m. ET kickoff, which has become the standard kickoff time for NFL games in Europe.
The NFL is planning a total of nine international games this season, with Madrid joining Melbourne, Rio de Janeiro, Paris, Munich, Mexico City and three games in London.
The Falcons announced earlier this year that they would be making a change to their uniform and they announced the date that their new look will be revealed on Monday.
In a video posted to their social media accounts, the Falcons shared that they will be unveiling the changes on April 2. The video features various Falcons players reacting to the uniforms without any revealing any glimpses of what they look like.
The Falcons switched to their current uniforms with an “ATL” abbreviation above the numbers in 2020. The team reintroduced red helmets as an alternate to their black headgear in 2022 and they have paired them with black throwback uniforms from the 1966 season in recent years.
There have been reports that the team will be going to red jerseys as their primary home uniform and we’ll find out if that’s the case in a month.
He was the first overall pick in the 2019 draft. And he’s destined to be looking for a new team.
So where will quarterback Kyler Murray’s career continue?
Barring a trade, which is unlikely unless the Cardinals pay a bunch of money and/or attach a draft pick to the sale of cap space, he’ll be cut. The Cardinals already owe Murray $36.8 million for 2026, with another $22.55 million hitting the books in the middle of March. The moment he was placed on injured reserve while recovering from a foot injury, the message was clear — Murray had played his last game for the Cardinals.
For plenty of coaches, there’s a minimum height requirement at the position, and Murray isn’t tall enough to ride the ride. Thus, as a threshold matter, a prospective employer has to be comfortable with Murray’s stature.
Last year, as the trade deadline approached and we poked around regarding the possibility of a trade, we heard that Murray was interested in joining the Raiders or the Vikings. The draw to Las Vegas, however, was offensive coordinator Chip Kelly. He’s now back at the college level.
Would the Vikings want Murray? They could possibly get him for the league minimum of $1.3 million, with the Cardinals paying the balance of his $36.8 million pay. (That’s what the Steelers did in 2024, when signing Russell Wilson and sticking the Broncos with most of his compensation.) The bigger question is whether coach Kevin O’Connell believes Murray would fit the Vikings’ offense.
Here’s another intriguing possibility, in our view: The Falcons. Coach Kevin Stefanski has no apparent qualms regarding shorter quarterbacks; Dillon Gabriel started multiple games for Stefanski and the Browns last year. And Atlanta has plenty of potent offensive weapons, from Bijan Robinson to Drake London to Kyle Pitts Sr.
The X factor in Atlanta will be president of football operations Matt Ryan, a former quarterback who measures six feet, five inches. Ryan may prefer a more traditional quarterback to hold down the fort while Michael Penix Jr. recovers from an ACL tear and the Falcons figure out whether he’s still the guy.
Still, the price could be just right on a one-year deal, for the Vikings, Falcons, or any other team currently looking for a new starter. And the Cardinals will likely be paying Murray a lot of money to play for another team in 2026.
It’s amazing the relationship lasted as long as it did. The Cardinals made it to the playoffs once in Murray’s seven seasons. And the ill-advised homework clause in his second contract drove a wedge that was never going to go away.
The cash and cap realities of that second deal made it hard to sever ties. Even now, it will leave a mark on Arizona’s books.
We’ll see whether Murray and his career record of 38-49-1 can make a mark in a new NFL city.
The Falcons have made another addition to their defensive coaching staff.
The team announced that Patrick Toney will be their defensive pass game coordinator. Toney had agreed to become the new defensive coordinator at Ole Miss earlier this year, but the school will now have to look for someone else to fill that role.
Toney spent the last three seasons as the Cardinals’ defensive backs coach. He was the co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach at Florida in 2022 and the defensive coordinator at Louisiana for two seasons before joining the Gators.
The Falcons also fired assistant defensive line coach LaTroy Lewis on Friday.
