The news we felt was coming all along became official Saturday: Terron Armstead is retiring from the NFL.
The five-time Miami Dolphins Pro Bowl tackle hosted a Pro Athlete Community event in Miami, after an invitation to the event promised a “major announcement that’s sure to spark conversation throughout the sports world.”
This comes after head coach Mike McDaniel said at the owners meetings this week that he was expecting a decision from Armstead soon and that, “It’s important for me to operate as though he is unavailable to us.”
McDaniel also said at the combine he was proceeding under the assumption that Armstead would not be available to the Dolphins in 2025, Armstead accepted to take a significant pay cut to lower his cap number to give the Dolphins more operating room in free agency.
Armstead still played at a high level whenever he was in the lineup, but he’s been fighting off or fighting through injuries pretty much his entire career — he never had a season without missing a game — and the question always was whether he wanted to put his body through another year.
“We have had unbelievable amount of conversations about his body and how he feels,” head coach Mike McDaniel said at the owners meetings last Monday. “I think, tied into that, where he’s at relative to other years and how we can realistically forecast that, I think that’s going to really shape the answer to that question.
“It hasn’t ever been about Terron’s play, right? It’s been about how he’s been available, and he’s been straining to be more available for us than a counterpart would. He’s played through a lot of stuff.”
Based on McDaniel’s comments, what Armstead has gone through, the drastic contract restructure, and Paul’s presence, all signs always seemed to suggest the Dolphins would have a new starting left tackle in 2025.
McDaniel said he expected a definitive call in the next few weeks, but it did seem as though the answer already had been provided and it became official Saturday.
Because the Dolphins likely wouldn’t have carried him with a $22.9 million cap number at the start of the 2025 league year, Armstead agreed to bring his base salary down from $13.3 million to the veteran minimum of $1.2 million, in the process lowering his cap number for 2025 to a little under $9 million, according to overthecap.com.
Doing some quick math, that was a cap savings of almost $14 million as long as Armstead is on the roster.
Releasing Armstead now actually would bump his cap number back up to $18.5 million (because of his prorated signing bonus). If the Dolphins decided to release Armstead with a post-June 1 designation, his cap number would go down to $7.8 million, saving the team an additional $1.2 million of cap space (the amount of his new base salary).
It truly was a drastic pay cut, one that would suggest that Armstead really was leaning toward retirement but wanted to give himself more time to finalize his decision.
Really, if Armstead was thinking he’d want to return for a 13th NFL season, it’s hard to believe he would have chopped his base salary to the veteran minimum because if the Dolphins ended up cutting him, he likely would have been able to make more than that on the open market given his credentials.
So this looked like a case of a veteran buying himself some time with his mind kind of made up or somebody who really, really just wants to play for the Dolphins for a fourth season.
Money clearly hasn’t been Armstead’s biggest motivating factor in the late stages of his NFL career because he took a pay cut last year as well when he returned to the Dolphins for a third season.
Like Calais Campbell, Armstead has had a great career, but one that’s been missing a Super Bowl title.
During interviews on Radio Row at Super Bowl LXIX, Armstead kept talking about the Dolphins as someone who was planning to be with the team in 2025.
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