After one year, Dolphins want to restructure Ndamukong Suh’s deal
The Miami Dolphins want to restructure Ndamukong Suh’s mega-contract after just one year, and to be fair, that seemed to be their plan all along.
The Palm Beach Post reported that there is a clause in Suh’s six-year, $114 million contract that allows the Dolphins to take one year of his salary and spread it out over the length of the deal. So the fact that Dolphins head of football operations Mike Tannenbaum told the Palm Beach Post that the team wants to restructure this offseason isn’t some crazy, unexpected development.
But it sure doesn’t make Suh’s contract look any better.
Suh was the prize of free agency last year, and the biggest name to hit free agency in many years. But once he landed with the Dolphins he was closer to Albert Haynesworth than Reggie White. Suh had six sacks, down from 8.5 the year before in Detroit, and the flailing Dolphins actually fell from 12th in yards allowed in 2014 to 25th last year and they didn’t sniff the playoffs. Suh, the highest-paid defensive player in NFL history, didn’t make the Pro Bowl. Suh wasn’t a total disaster — Pro Football Focus graded him fourth-best among interior defensive linemen — but the Dolphins were much worse on defense with Suh and their 6-10 record was their worst since 2011. They were two wins better in 2014, before adding Suh.
The contract needed to be redone. The cap hit for Suh this year is $28.6 million (whaaaaa???) and a restructure can free up $18 million for the Dolphins, who don’t have much cap room. And that’s fine for the men who run the team now, who will either succeed or fail and pass off this contract to the next group of suckers who are hired to manage the front office. But a restructure doesn’t simply eliminate the problem. It just chases it down the road a bit. These bills still come due, on the salary cap.
Last year, when the Dolphins signed Suh as soon as they could, it was exciting for the organization. They landed an impact player who could perhaps lift them into the playoffs. Instead, the Dolphins got worse with Suh, and now have to look at his contract and wonder how they got themselves this financially invested in a player who did very little to improve the defense.
Perhaps Suh will be a dominant force in his second Dolphins season. Even if he is, it’s hard to imagine the Dolphins getting a good return on investment with him. One year in, that contract already looks downright frightening.
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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab
