Miami Dolphins Take Care of Christian Wilkins Fifth-Year Option
There have been a handful of teams picking up the fifth-year option on the contract of 2019 first-round picks this year, and on Thursday it was the Miami Dolphins’ turn.
As should have been expected, particularly since GM Chris Grier indicated as much last month, the Dolphins have picked up the fifth-year option on the contract of defensive tackle Christian Wilkins.
The move guarantees Wilkins a salary of just under $10.8 million for the 2023 season, though there’s nothing stopping the Dolphins from signing Wilkins to an extension before then.
After his performance in 2019, the 26-year-old Wilkins certainly looks like a cornerstone for a defense the Dolphins are confident can pick up this season where he left off in 2021, hence the decision to retain coordinator Josh Boyer and most of his assistants along with re-signing several free agents and pending free agents from that side of the ball.
For the first time in his NFL career, Wilkins started every game for the Dolphins in 2021 and set career highs in tackles (89), sacks (4.5), tackles for loss (10) and QB hits (13).
Wilkins ended up playing 65.2 percent of the defensive snaps, the second-highest percentage among Dolphins defensive linemen behind only Emmanuel Ogbah’s 67.1 percent.
Dolphins History with Fifth-Year Option
The fifth-year option for first-round pick contracts was introduced in the 2011 CBA, though the Dolphins haven’t made much use of it recently.
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Wilkins becomes the first player for whom the Dolphins exercised the fifth-year option since they did it with Laremy Tunsil in 2019. Prior to that, the Dolphins did use the fifth-year option on DeVante Parker, Ja’Wuan James, Ryan Tannehill and Mike Pouncey.
Of those five players, James was the only one who ended up playing his fifth year with the Dolphins on the option year — he then left for Denver as an unrestricted free agent in March 2019.
Parker, Tannehill and Pouncey all signed extensions before their fifth season with the Dolphins, while Tunsil ended up getting traded to the Houston Texans, who signed him to a three-year extension in April 2020 — before his fifth season.
Since Tunsil, the Dolphins traded Charles Harris to Atlanta in 2020 before the deadline to pick up his fifth-year option and Minkah Fitzpatrick was traded to the Pittsburgh Steelers early in his second NFL season — the Steelers picked up his fifth-year option through the 2022 season.
The Dolphins released Taco Charlton before the fifth-year option deadline in 2020 after acquiring him off waivers in 2019.
Looking Ahead: Tua and Others
Based on the current roster, the Dolphins will have three decisions to make regarding fifth-year options at this time next year.
The most prominent one, of course, will involve quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, which is why we wrote a few weeks back about the importance of the 2022 season for him in terms of the team needed to make a call on whether to move forward with him beyond next season.
The other two players on whom the Dolphins will have to make decisions next spring will be tackle Austin Jackson and cornerback Noah Igbinoghene, and it clearly would take a major step forward by either player for the team to guarantee their 2024 contracts.
