A Look at Miami Dolphins’ Jaelan Phillips Fifth-Year Option Decision

There was one very faint silver lining to Jaelan Phillips’ Achilles tendon tear for the Miami Dolphins.

It made the cost of keeping him beyond 2024 quite reasonable.

The Dolphins have four weeks to decide whether they want to apply the fifth-year option on Phillips, but for these reasons, we expect them to do so — even if there’s uncertainty about his recovery.

Miami Dolphins Should Pick Up Jaelan Phillips’ Fifth-Year Option

Before his Black Friday injury, Phillips was having a career year. He was on pace to set personal bests in sacks and tackles for loss and would have gotten strong consideration for the Pro Bowl.

And even despite missing three games early in the season, Phillips almost certainly would have been on the field for at least half of his team’s defensive snaps for the third time in as many seasons.

Playing time and Pro Bowl appearances are all factors in determining a player’s fifth-year option salary.

By missing significant time and the league’s all-star game, Phillips’ fifth-year option number is as low as it could be: $13.3 million, which isn’t even one of the 20 highest EDGE cap figures on the books for 2025.

So while there is no risk to the Dolphins picking up that option — his $12 million salary becomes fully guaranteed, so long as he doesn’t retire — the risk is so low that Chris Grier probably doesn’t need to think twice about it.

The only reason the Dolphins wouldn’t pick up Phillips’ option is if they have distressing information we do not about his rehab.

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But that seems quite unlikely, given what Mke McDaniel said about Phillips — owed just $2.6 million in base salary this year — and Bradley Chubb (who tore his ACL in December) at last month’s Annual League Meeting.

“They have been doing phenomenal,” McDaniel said. ” … Relative to timelines, we specifically don’t have those for those two. … They’re both really doing exactly what you’d expect from those two individuals, which is absolutely attacking that process, but doing it from a perspective that they don’t want to get healthy for one week, they want to get healthy for the whole season. So that’s what they’re working toward.”

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