A creative and unusual trade the Titans could pursue that weaponizes their cap space to gain a player and a draft pick in 2026

This sounds crazy, and it probably is. But I’m certain it’s an idea that’s at least crossed the Titans and Dolphins’ minds…

Easton Freeze — Tennessee Titans Beat Writer
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The Miami Dolphins have a QB mess on their hands. To be fair, it’s a mess of their own making. Nobody made them extend Tua Tagovailoa on a 4 year/$212.4 million deal in 2024. But now that he was benched at the end of a disastrous 2025 season, culminating in the firing of the head coach who was brought in specifically to build an offense around him, Tua’s time in Miami is up.

The Dolphins have made it clear that they’d like to find a trade partner instead of cutting Tagovailoa, which is no surprise. Of course they would. But who in the world would entertain becoming that partner?

The answer might be the Tennessee Titans.

What a Titans trade for Tua Tagovailoa could look like

What if the Titans traded for Tua? Their incentive wouldn’t actually be adding Tua to the roster, they have no reason to want an extremely overpaid backup for the sake of playing backup. But they are in the market for additional draft capital wherever they can find it, and that is what they’d be after. if the Dolphins were so desperate to trade Tua that they’d be willing to send a trade partner some draft capital in addition to the QB himself, there is no team in the league better positioned to absorb that contract on paper.

This is a half-baked idea that crossed my mind over the weekend.

And my friend Matt Harmon had the same idea today, which got a significant reaction on social media.

The Titans are going to end up with right around $100 million in cap space at minimum, and could relatively easily create even more if they wanted to. The Dolphins surely want to escape the financial hell that they’re about to be in with this contract, and the Titans have money to spare, need a decent backup QB to Cam Ward, and could use another draft pick or two. So why not try this?

Well, when you start to dig into the details and think about some of the facts of this case, it starts to sound a whole lot less realistic.

As far as I can tell, the Titans would be taking on roughly $56 million of Tua’s 2026 cap hit in a trade. They have room to do that, but it would eat into the money they could let rollover into future seasons. They’d have to do the math on how much they actually want to spend this offseason, and how much reserve space they’d be comfortable going into next season with.

On the Titans’ end of things, The biggest question is really how much draft capital you’d be getting. How much would make this worth it for you? Because besides the added benefit of crossing backup QB off your shopping list, this is still a significant burden you’re taking on. The closest precedent we have to this kind of trade was when the Texans shipped QB Brock Osweiler to the Browns in 2018 to dump his salary. But Osweiler’s contract as a percentage of the total cap was roughly two-thirds what Tagovailoa’s is set to be.

The Browns sent a 2017 4th round pick for Osweiler, a 2017 6th, and a 2018 2nd. That comes out to roughly the value of a 3rd round pick depending on which chart you use to do the math on it. So what would Tua cost in this regard? The value of a 2nd? With so little to go off of here, I’m not exactly sure how to gauge it.

Then we turn to the Dolphins’ side of things, and whichever path they take with this Tua contract is an unsavory one. He’s roughly a $56 million cap hit if you keep him and make him sit the bench. If you cut him pre-June 1st, he’ll be an eye-watering $99 million dead cap hit in 2026. Wait until June and his dead cap will prorate over the next two seasons at roughly $45 million apiece. And even if you find a trade partner, you still eat a one-time $45 million dead cap hit in 2026, though you save roughly $11 million in cap space in the process.

The bottom line is this: what are their plans this year? With a whole new regime in place, a QB contract that’s going to saddle them one way or another, and a lot of work to do to turn over this roster… I just don’t see them trying to be competitive right away. If I were them, I’d gut this thing and do everything in preparation for the fall of 2027. Your future success is going to require patience, finding a QB, and hitting on draft picks. Tua’s contract is going to cost you one way or another, so what good does halving your dead cap and saving $11 million in cap space in 2026 do you in the longrun?

Not much, if you ask me. And again, to do this, you have to trade the Titans serious draft capital to facilitate the deal. It’s an interesting idea that I can’t fault anybody for having, not even the front offices of these teams themselves. I had it too. And if the Dolphins are for some reason desperate enough to ship off a nice draft pick or two to get Tua’s impact on their books down, I could see a world where the Titans entertain it. I just find that hard to beleive.

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