If you had told Denver Broncos fans back in Week 3 of the 2023 season that in less than three years, the Dolphins would cut quarterback Tua Tagovailoa and take the biggest dead cap charge in NFL history, nobody would have believed you.
And yet, here we are.
Multiple reports indicate that the Dolphins are poised to make Tagovailoa a post-June 1 cut, meaning they will have to eat $99 million in dead money left on his contract. The Denver Broncos once took an unprecedented (at the time) $85 million dead cap charge on quarterback Russell Wilson, meaning that the team that trounced the Broncos 70-20 in that fateful Week 3 matchup in 2023 has now made a little more history against the Broncos.
Dolphins take a page out of Broncos' Russell Wilson playbook, cut Tua Tagovailoa
It's hard to believe the series of events that has taken place since the Denver Broncos got their you-know-whats handed to them by the Dolphins in Miami back in the 2023 season. At the time, Sean Payton was still trying to instill a new culture into the Broncos' organization. Fans were calling for Vance Joseph to be fired immediately. Nik Bonitto was not even starting for the Broncos at that time.
The Dolphins appeared to be on a trajectory to become an offensive powerhouse in the AFC. Mike McDaniel was looking like a genius week after week, Tua was an MVP candidate, Tyreek Hill was playing better than ever, and the Dolphins were rolling.
Now, entering the 2026 season, the Denver Broncos are one of the best teams in the AFC, retaining all of their own players and building around franchise quarterback Bo Nix. The Dolphins fired McDaniel this offseason, moved on from GM Chris Grier during the 2025 season, and have not only cut Tua but also Tyreek Hill, Bradley Chubb, and a number of other notable veterans.
The Dolphins are tearing it down, while the Broncos are going for another Lombardi.
Again, if you had told Broncos fans in the moments after that 70-20 loss that this would be the reality less than three years later, nobody would have believed you. People would have been more inclined to believe that Sean Payton was fired, that things didn't work out between him and the Broncos, and that the Broncos were still reeling from the decision to cut Russell Wilson.
But here we are. The Dolphins have taken the Broncos' spot in a category nobody wants to rank 1st in. And they might not have just taken the Broncos' spot, but they might have even taken a page out of their book and realized that a historic dead cap hit doesn't have to cripple the franchise, but can actually be a necessary decision to get you back into contention.