GM says goal is to have Tua with Fins long term

Marcel Louis-Jacques, ESPNJan 15, 2024, 06:58 PM ET
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MIAMI — The Dolphins hope to keep quarterback Tua Tagovailoa in South Florida for the foreseeable future, general manager Chris Grier said Monday.

Speaking to local media, Grier said while the two sides tabled contract negotiations during the regular season, they will intensify this offseason as Tagovailoa enters the final year of his rookie deal.

“We’ve stayed in touch with his agent, had good conversations throughout the year,” Grier said. “Never talked about money or anything, just good conversations about where he is. … The goal is to have him here long term, playing at a high level. That’s always the goal.

“We’ll communicate with him through the offseason and like we’ve always said in the past, you guys know me, we don’t really talk to the media through all that stuff. So, we’ll keep those talks internal and with his reps.”

Tagovailoa led the NFL in passing yards this season with 4,624, playing a full season for the first time in his four-year professional career. He also set career highs with 29 passing touchdowns and a 69.3 completion percentage.

However, he threw just four touchdowns against five interceptions during Miami’s final three games, including Saturday’s loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC wild-card round, and failed to surpass 200 passing yards in two of them.

After completing a season-low 51.3% of his passes Saturday night against the Chiefs, Tagovailoa said he was not worried about his impending contract negotiations and didn’t feel any pressure to get a deal done.

“I don’t feel any pressure at all. I have full trust in myself,” Tagovailoa said. “I have full trust in what I’m capable of doing for our organization, but outside of that, we’re focusing on tonight and what happened. We’re going to simmer on this and see what we can do to get better from it for next year.”

Playing every game this season was an even bigger goal than usual for Tagovailoa, after two separate concussions in 2022 kept him out of five games and knocked him out of a sixth.

He prepared for the rigors of the season with an offseason strength training program, as well as a break fall jiu-jitsu program. Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said he would like to see Tagovailoa’s upward trajectory continue over the next several months.

“I just want to see him make sure the curve continues to be exponential in his growth,” McDaniel said. “We’ve seen at every stretch of the way him improving. That doesn’t mean it’s void of a result that isn’t desired. But what we’ve seen is him learn from all the things that he goes through. … I think that’s what I want to see, is that continued thirst to find different ways, while maintaining and growing your confidence, to always create new edges in your game.

“Is Tua going to be a zone-read option quarterback? No. But I think he has developed in some — like buying extra time when necessary. … I think he just needs to continue to do what he has been doing in terms of progressing and I’ll be very much happy with that.”

While Tagovailoa enters the final year of his contract in 2024, defensive tackle Christian Wilkins is an unrestricted free agent this offseason. Grier said Wilkins “earned the right to be a free agent” and the Dolphins will work to keep their 2019 first-round pick.

“Christian and I actually had a really good conversation today. I was very happy for him,” Grier said. “He bet on himself after a summer of negotiations where we made a couple offers and one we felt very good about, was fair, and he and his representation said as much, but we couldn’t close that gap at the end. So, he bet on himself, and it paid off for him.

“We’ll stay in communication and see where this ends up, but he earned the right to be a free agent. Again, I’m happy for him. We drafted him here, developed him here and he’s the type of person we’re looking for. So, we’ll see what happens.”

Grier had a similar sentiment for upcoming free agent offensive linemen Connor Williams and Robert Hunt, the latter of which Grier said the Dolphins had contract conversations with during the season.

Hunt told local media he would like to remain with the team that drafted him in the second round in 2020.

“These guys have earned the rights to be free agents,” Grier said. “We would like them to be here. They want to be here. So, we’ll have to see what happens.”