Dolphins receiver Tyreek Hill has been trying to get a revised contract since the end of the 2023 season. A string of new deals for other players has complicated that process, culminating in teammate Jaylen Waddle getting $28.25 million per year in new money and Vikings receiver Justin Jefferson pushing the bar for all non-quarterbacks to $35 million per year.
Hill is under contract for three more years. He’s due to make $19.765 million in 2024, $22.935 million in 2025, and $45 million in 2026. That’s $87.7 million in existing obligations, an average of $29.23 million per year. The 2024 salary is fully guaranteed.
The final year of $45 million was aimed at artificially bumping the new-money average on the two-year-old contract from $25 million to $30 million. The key to making Hill happier with his contract situation could be to move that remaining money around.
The simplest approach would be to make it $29.23 million in each of the next three years, with the first two years fully guaranteed.
That would get him past Waddle in annual average (sort of), and it would make the meaningless final year of the existing contract meaningful.
And if Hill insists on having a higher average at signing, another phony year or two could be stapled onto the back end of the contract.
However it works out, Hill wants something to be done. The Dolphins could, in theory, tell him that his current contract is only two years old, and that he’s expected to honor it as written. On one hand, that could result in Hill being difficult in 2024, like he apparently was (at least privately) during his final year with the Chiefs. On the other hand, Hill might realize that it will become a rough look for him to have complained his way out of Kansas City before complaining his way out of Miami.
The best outcome would be to find a way to shuffle Hill’s cash to get him more this year, and to give him a way to spin his situation as something more than $25 million per year in new money, since the $45 million due in 2026 was and continues to be phony and fake.
