12:02pm: The Dolphins have strongly denied that they will move on from Suh at season’s end, as Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald reports. Defensive coordinator Matt Burke recently expressed an appreciation for Suh both as a player — and, as stated below, Suh has been playing well — and as a mentor for younger players, and the team has said La Canfora’s report is “100 percent not true.”

8:00am: Dolphins DT Ndamukong Suh will once again find himself in hot water with the league office after grabbing the throat of Ravens backup QB Ryan Mallett during Thursday night’s blowout loss in Baltimore, and according to Jason La Canfora of CBS Sports, Suh’s continued bad behavior will help trigger his departure from Miami at the end of the season.

Now 30, Suh was one of the most lavish free agent signings in league history when he signed a six-year, $114MM deal with the Dolphins in March 2015. While he has played well for Miami, he has not helped elevate the defense as a whole. The team was among the league’s worst at stopping the run in 2015 and 2016, and while the Dolphins are in the top ten in that regard this season, the defense is still a middle-of-the-pack unit in terms of points allowed.

Suh’s signing, of course, predates the arrival of head coach Adam Gase, and he is seen as a largely aloof leftover of the old regime with dubious leadership skills. And, while cutting him would create some salary cap difficulties, La Canfora says the Dolphins are willing and able to deal with those difficulties to rid themselves of a player whose negatives have begun to outweigh his positives.

The full guarantees in Suh’s contract have been paid out already, and the Dolphins would save $17MM in cash and $17MM in cap space by designating him a post-June 1 cut in 2018. That would create a $13MM dead cap number in 2019, but La Canfora says the team is willing to absorb that. If Suh is still on the roster by the fifth day of the 2018 league year next March, then $8.5MM of his 2018 salary becomes guaranteed, so if Miami does release Suh, it would happen prior to that date.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.