Ryan Tannehill had a career year in Lazor’s brand new offense and showed enough improvement to give hope to the organization and the fans. I think that Tannehill can be Miami’s long term answer at the vaunted QB position. The biggest thing was that Tannehill improved in all major QB categories and Lazor was able to tailor the offense towards his strengths. Another important characteristic that Tannehill exhibited was toughness. He may not be one of the best QB’s in the league yet, however most sports gambling fans would say that he is one of the toughest QB’s in the league.
For the 2015 season Tannehill will be paid around $2.5 million and the team has until May 3rd to decide if they want to exercise the fifth-year option, which would give Tannehill a guaranteed $15 million in 2016. If they choose to not use the option then they can either sign him to a long term option or they can allow him to hit free agency. The problem of sitting on your hands and letting Tannehill hit free-agency is that he could become an upper echelon QB over the next two years and then Miami will have to shell out a lot more money to keep him. Just look at what happened to Flacco in his contract year, all he did was have a career year and win a Super Bowl, and then the Ravens were forced to sign him to the largest QB contract in the history of the game at that time.
With my inside contacts, I am hearing that Miami is already looking to figure out a long term deal that would lock Tannehill up for the next 7 years and would pay him around $105 million. Its a big number, however QB is the most important position in all of sports and if a team feels like they have found their answer at QB for the foreseeable future, then this is the type of money they need to pay. Also Andy Dalton and Colin Kaepernick just signed similar contracts, and most football gambling fans would argue that Tannehill has actually flashed more than both of these players and his statistics back it up as well.
Tannehill has started all 16 games for each of his first 3 seasons and he just threw for over 4,000 yards, which was the first Dolphin player to achieve this feat since Dan Marino. Anytime your name comes up in the same sentence as the all time great Dan Marino, then you are doing something right and are heading in the right direction. Personally I think Tannehill has showed a lot of positive strides and should only improve as his career progresses. He has the toughness, the work ethic and Lazor is definitely a great mentor to help him become one of the top QB’s in the league. Not only that but if Miami locks him up now they can save some money for the future. However, the more important question is when should Miami lock him up and not if they should lock him up to a long term contract or not. They might want to use the fifth-year option and pay the $15 million and see how well he does over the next two seasons. However if he does continue to improve over the next two seasons then he will most likely cost the team a lot more money when they work out a long term contract from 2017 and on.
Lets not forget that Brady, Manning, Rivers, and Roethlisberger are not going to be around forever. So after they go, who will Tannehill’s QB competition be in the AFC;? Luck, Dalton, Flacco, and Smith? Besides Luck, I think Tannehill can and will be better than these other QB’s. Sure there will always be young talented QB’s coming up through the draft, however Tannehill is still very young and can give Miami one of the best QB’s in the AFC in the next few years, so why not lock him down now, and save some money in the process, so they can use the savings on good players to surround him with.