Over the last few days, I’ve heard multiple NFL media types allude to Tyreek Hill as a salary cap casualty. The implication is that the Miami Dolphins cut him to preserve salary cap space.

But this is a false narrative! Tyreek Hill was not a salary cap casualty. He was a CASH casualty.

The Miami Dolphins were not trying to create salary cap space. The reality is that they just didn’t want to pay Hill the big amount of cash he was owed. NFL teams are always all about saving cash.

If Miami really wanted to keep Hill and determined that he was worthy of more cash investment, then the Dolphins brass could have easily created salary cap space in other ways to enable them to keep Hill on the roster. The Dolphins could have also done the same with their recently released defensive end Bradley Chubb if they truly wanted to keep him on the roster too.

As we’ll see herein, it was not about the cap. It was about cash. Let’s examine further.

 

Hill’s Contract Deets: It’s About the Cash

In 2022, Tyreek Hill signed a four-year, $120 million contract. But that deal ended-up only going two years (2022 and 2023 seasons).

In 2024, Hill signed a three-year, $90 million contract restructure and extension that kept him under contract through 2026. Here’s how his deals were structured:

 

 

Hill was slated to be paid $40.9 million in 2026 (roster bonus in March of $11 million and a base salary of $29.9 million throughout the 2026 season) and he would have counted for $51.1 million against the 2026 salary cap (including salary cap charges for previously paid prorated bonuses).

For various reasons, the Miami Dolphins did not want to pay Hill another $51.1 million. Maybe it’s because they see Hill as a declining player. Maybe it’s because he’s coming off a significant injury. Maybe it’s because he’s a turd in the locker room. Maybe it’s because of his off-field shenanigans. Honestly, I don’t know precisely why they determined they didn’t want him. But at some point, they made the determination to move on.

 

No More ‘New’ Money, But Some ‘Dead’ Money

By cutting Hill, that means they no longer owe him the $40.9million that he would have been paid in 2026. Hill will not see any more money from the Dolphins ever again.

However, there will be a dead money salary cap charge to the Dolphins in 2026 for Tyreek Hill. The sum of dead money is not money that they will still be paying to Hill. Dead money is money that they previously paid the Hill that was never accounted for against the salary cap

From 2022 to 2025, the Dolphins actually paid Tyreek Hill a grand total of $105.96 million. However, only $77.71 million of those monies ever counted against the NFL salary cap over the course of those seasons (as you see in the table above). Which means, there is an outstanding balance of $28.25 million that still must be counted against the cap.

According to the collective bargaining agreement (CBA), any and all monies paid to a player must eventually count against the cap. In the case a player is released, all outstanding unaccounted for dollars must be accelerated—fully charged immediately against the cap in the league year in which he was released. Hill’s release will be official in the 2026 league year, therefore all outstanding monies (in this case $28.25 million) must count against the 2026 cap.

Hill was originally slated to count for $51.1 million against the cap, but now he will only count $28.25 million, so the reports have focused on the $22.85 million in salary cap savings.

Hill’s total time with Miami actually ended up looking like this:

 

 

Restructuring is Always an Option

NFL teams often create salary cap space by restructuring contracts.

For example, the Kansas City Chiefs recently did this with Patrick Mahomes (this is actually the fourth consecutive off-season where the Chiefs restructured Mahomes’ contract).

Coming into the 2026 off-season the Chiefs were reportedly slated to be $55 million over the salary cap. The Chiefs restructured Mahomes’ contract, reducing his 2026 salary cap hit from $78.2 million down to $34.65 million. The Dolphins very well could have done something like this with both Tyreek Hill and Bradley Chubb.

The Miami Dolphins are obviously philosophically amenable to this approach, evidenced by the fact that they had already restructured Hill’s deal once before, back during the 2024 off-season.

One way to do this would have been to convert the bulk of the $40.9 million scheduled payments into signing bonuses and prorate those monies over several seasons.

As previously mentioned, they were originally slated to pay Hill $11 million in March and then $29.9 million over the course of the 2026 season. But they could have modified that and paid Hill $39.6 million as a signing bonus in March and then pay him $1.3 million base salary over the course of the 2026 season.

The full amount of base salary would count in 2026 but only 1/5 of the signing bonus would count against the 2026 cap with the rest slated to be dead money in 2027. There would also be $28.25 million left over monies from the 2024 extension that would need to be stretched out against the cap in 2026 and 2027. The new deal would look something like this:

 

 

As previously stated, Hill was originally slated to count for $51.1 million against the salary cap in 2026, but with this new deal he would only count for $19.42 million. The salary cap savings for 2026 would have been $31.68 million in salary cap savings—nearly $9 million more than releasing Hill.

If the Miami Dolphins really wanted to simply save salary cap space in 2026, then keeping Hill would actually make more sense. The same is true for defensive end Bradley Chubb. If they truly wanted to keep Chubb on the roster too, they could have made a way by restructuring his contract and simultaneously creating even more salary cap space than was created by merely releasing him.

 

Extensions are Options Too

The other option would have been for the Dolphins to extend Tyreek Hill beyond the 2026 season.

According to various outlets, the fair value of a wide receiver of Hill’s ilk (at this stage of his career coming off a major injury) is probably $10-$16 million per year. Based on the major injury, he likely would have been closer to the lower end of the range of $10 million for 2027 and then closer to $16 million for 2028.

So, the Dolphins could have kept Hill on the roster, paid him the $40.9 million for 2026, in the form of a converted bonus (as previously explained), and then they could have offered him two additional years—they likely would have proposed to pay 50% in base salaries and 50% in option bonuses for the 2027 and 2028 seasons (the Dolphins have liked using this sort of option bonus structure recently).

This sort of offer would have paid Hill $66.9 million over the next three seasons. There’s no doubt in my mind that Hill would have accepted this sort of deal since he’s coming off a major injury and 2026 will be his age 31 season.

When we add in the $28.25 million of left over monies from the 2024 extension that would have still needed to be stretched out against the cap in 2026 and 2027, the new deal would have looked something like this:

 

 

Just like with a restructure, the extension would have actually created more salary cap space for the Dolphins in 2026 than releasing him, but this would have increased the amount of money they’d be committing to Hill. And, of course, it’s hard to imagine that the Dolphins would want to commit those dollars.

This brings me back to the original point: Keeping Hill simply did not make sense. No team would want to commit those sums of dollars to a 31-year old wideout coming off major injury.

Similarly, the Dolphins could have extended defensive end Bradley Chubb too, if they wanted to keep him. But Chubb will be 30 years old this summer and his play has declined.

If the Dolphins’ main goal was primarily to save salary cap space, then there’s a strong argument to be made that keeping those aging and ailing players would have actually been the better option.

 

Conclusion

If the Dolphins wanted to keep Tyreek Hill, they could have. He was not a causality of the cap. He was a causality of the cash. They didn’t want to pay him big dollars. Same with Bradley Chubb.

This helps prove, there’s no such thing as a true salary cap casualty. In almost every case, NFL teams can create the same amount of salary cap space (or more) by opting to keep the player(s) and restructuring or extending the pertinent contracts.

NFL teams don’t cut players that they truly want to keep. They only cut players that they’re ready to move on from. If an NFL team really wants to keep a player, the NFL salary cap won’t stop them.