The Dolphins signed defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh to a six-year, $114 million contract last March and they may try to restructure it before hitting the first anniversary of Suh’s arrival in Miami.
The team has some salary cap maintenance to do in the coming weeks and Suh’s set to count $28.6 million under the cap as his base salary balloons from $985,000 to $23.485 million for the coming season. On Tuesday, Dolphins executive vice president of football operations Mike Tannenbaum said that revisiting Suh’s contract is something he expects to come up as they sort things out early in the offseason.
“That’s certainly one of the levers we’re going to take a close look at,” Tannenbaum said, via the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. “We haven’t made any decisions as it relates to strategic planning or salary cap, budget, things like that. We have designed, and I think [executive vice president of football administration] Dawn [Aponte] has done a really good job when these contracts were constructing, that we have a lot of flexibility.By the time we get to the first day of the league year, we should have plenty of room to address the needs that we have, and certainly we’ll be looking at Suh’s contract.”
Converting some of Suh’s salary into a roster bonus would allow the Dolphins to lessen Suh’s cap hit now while increasing it in later seasons. That could create similar cap squeezes down the line, although they would be less severe if the cap continues to rise as it has in recent seasons.