Greg Cote: Dolphins got good haul, but blame curse of Tua for trading Waddle at all

Greg Cote, Miami Herald on Mar 17, 2026

Published in Football

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MIAMI — The Curse of Tua Tagovailoa strikes again!

The Miami Dolphins made a major trade on Tuesday, sending wide receiver Jaylen Waddle to Denver for draft picks. It was not a deal that makes the Fins better right now. It was a deal that stops the money-hemorrhage a bit.

So thanks again to the departed quarterback whom the Dolphins essentially are paying $100 million to be anywhere else. He’s Tua: The gift that keeps on taking. Even gone (he signed with Atlanta), Tagovailoa continues costing Miami.

As for the trade itself, one the Dolphins sort of had to make financially, it’s a reasonably good one for Miami — though not as good as at first glance.

Miami is getting first, third and fourth round picks in the 2026 NFL draft. Sounds like a haul, but a bit less like a haul when you consider the Broncos’ pick in each round is 30th, or very near the bottom, and Miami is giving up a higher fourth-round selection in addition to Waddle. So, in essence, the Fins are getting very low 1R and 3R picks, still a reasonable bounty, but not a windfall.

It’s a still a fair deal for Waddle, 27, who, one great season aside, played at a WR2-level more than as an established premier guy. If anything, Denver’s win-now mode meant the better of the deal for Miami. We loved Waddle for a minute or two; his little penguin-dance was fun while it lasted. But let’s not retrofit this. He’s replaceable, and Miami did well in the return for him.

Still, it leaves the Dolphins thin in the wide receiver room right now, without much proof there after third-year man Malik Washington, who has mostly shone on kickoff returns.

You have to wonder how Tuesday’s trade caught newly signed free agent QB Malik Willis, now watching his top weapon fly off to Denver. I doubt it caught him entirely by surprise, as surely knows the massive albatross new general manager Jon-Eric Sullivan and new head coach Jeff Hafley inherited in Tua’s crazy-big contract.

(And thanks for that to departed GM Chris Grier, who dubiously lavished that extension upon a QB who’d soon cascade out of favor yet keep costing his former team.)

Miami is taking on an NFL-record $99.2 million in dead salary-cap money to make Tagovailoa disappear, including a fully guaranteed $56 million owed in ‘26. Designating Tua as a post-June 1 release enables the club to split what is owed into a $66.7 million cap hit this coming season and $32.5M in ‘27.

Anyway you slice it, the previous regime’s costly misplay on Tua’s talent and future will reverberate for years, making heavier and harder, and perhaps longer, the new regime’s rebuild.

In fairness, Miami spending fairly big for its new QB Willis also made trading Waddle more necessary. Willis signed a three-year, $67.5 million deal with $45M guaranteed. That’s mid-range money for the position — a bargain if he proved to be as good as the potential Sullivan and Hafley think they saw in Green Bay.

Signing Willis alone should snuff any notion that the new regime is overtly tanking, NBA style, to lose big with (very) high draft picks in mind. No doubt some fans wish that.

Miami’s new leadership instead is relying on a stockpiling of picks and a faith in its drafting to rebuild ground-up. This plan also enables the cost-cutting required by the gift that keeps on taking — the quarterback now departed but still costing Miami dearly.