Six years, $96 million.
On face value, you would believe the Miami Dolphins have married themselves to Ryan Tannehill for the long haul; however, the intricate workings of an NFL contract say otherwise. As with anything in life, there are no guarantees.
Bleacher Report NFL Insider Jason Cole explains what his sources have revealed about Tannehill's new mega-deal (via Bleacher Report):
"According to sources, the Miami Dolphins essentially bought four, one-year contracts for Ryan Tannehill in the contract extension that he recently signed," he said. "Although the deal comes out as essentially a six-year, $96 million deal, the additional four years are $19.2 million on average."
"In talking to sources, what they say is the Dolphins paid roughly $25 million to buy that contract," Cole continues. "At any time after the first two years, essentially the Dolphins can get out of this contract any year, any time," he added. "It is a copy essentially of what the Andy Dalton, Colin Kaepernick deals are and while agent [Pat] Dye has defended the deal, multiple other agents say that it is just proof that there is no dedication and no desire by these teams to lock in a quarterback for long term when they can basically play it year to year."
Obviously, forcing players to play on a year-to-year basis doesn't sit well with the NFL Player's Association, but little has been done to prevent future contracts from following a similar blueprint.
"Now, the NFLPA doesn't like this kind of case," Cole said. "They were in fact very angry with the Kaepernick and Dalton deals. We'll see if the NFLPA has any kind of reaction to this in the long term."
"The other issue is: How will this affect Russell Wilson, Andrew Luck and Cam Newton? And the basic answer is it won't have an affect on them at all, but those players are going to have to wait and play out their leverage. All of those teams would prefer this kind of deal that Tannehill has done to any kind of long-term investment in a quarterback."
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