Seahawks are keeping Frank Clark. Signs from combine are it will be with a $17M franchise tag
If Pete Carroll was as sure about all things Seahawks as he is about this, the team would be back in Super Bowls immediately.
“Frankie will be with us, yeah,” Seattle coach said Thursday inside the Indiana Convention Center at the NFL’s scouting combine.
“Frankie” Clark has his contract expiring. He could become a free agent in two weeks, when the league market opens. Other, salivating bidders would be sending Brinks trucks the size of aircraft carriers at Clark and his agent. That’s what happens to guys who are still just 25 years old and coming off a career-best 14-sack season, with 34 sacks in his last 48 games in this passer-and-sack-the-passer league.
None of that is going to happen. Clark is not going to free agency.
The Seahawks know it. Clark knows it—has since at least Jan. 5, in fact.
“At the end of the day, I just feel like whatever’s in my coach’s plans, whatever’s in our guys’ plans, I think they are going to take care of it,” Clark told The News Tribune in the visiting locker room in Arlington, Texas, minutes after the Seahawks’ playoff loss at Dallas last month.
Both sides are more than swell with that. Clark’s agent, Erik Burkhardt, told ESPN that in October.
This is no standard contract negotiation between employer and employee. It’s not cold business devoid of emotion or personal connection.
The Seahawks took a chance on Clark four years ago. Months after Michigan kicked him out of its program for a domestic-violence arrest, some NFL teams dropping him from their draft boards that year. Even though critics were howling across the Pacific Northwest about bringing society’s epidemic of domestic violence into their locker room, the Seahawks made Clark the first player it drafted in 2015, in the second round.
“Frank and I, we have a great relationship,” Seahawks general manager John Schneider said Wednesday. “Communications have been great. There’s a strong level of trust between the two of us.”
So how are the Seahawks going to retain their leading pass rusher?
Signs are Seattle is about to do something it hasn’t done in nine years in order to keep Clark from free agency: use a franchise-tag designation on a player.
Each team gets one per year, per the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement. The Seahawks have not used theirs since 2010 when Carroll and general manager John Schneider, in their first month leading the franchise, retained kicker Olindo Mare for a year with it.
The Seahawks have been talking with Clark and agent Burkhardt for months about a long-term extension. That would be better than a franchise tag for the team’s 2019 salary cap. A tag for NFL defensive ends is expected to cost $17.3 million against the cap this year. A multiyear deal would be for a lower cap number and presumably lower base salary for this year, sweetened for Clark with a signing bonus and upfront guarantees that make his overall pay greater.
Teams can prorate signing bonuses over the life of a contract to make deals more cap friendly, which is why most big-bucks extensions are for four or five years (five years is the maximum time a team can prorate a signing bonus per the CBA).
Clark and Burkhardt have been willing to wait, because the franchise tag would mean he gets a raise from $943,000 last season to over $17 million in 2019—and be eligible to become a free agent again this time next year, when he will still be just 26 years old.
That’s a win-win for him.
There is an added incentive for the Seahawks to tag Clark rather than increase their offer now to him on a multiyear deal: Even after designating Clark their franchise-tag player and taking away his right to free agency in two weeks, they would retain the opportunity to sign him to a multiyear contract for four additional months. Teams can continue negotiating on new contracts with franchise-tag players until July 15, at which time such a player can only play that season on a one-year deal at the tag value.
Deadlines spur action and compromise in the NFL. And there is one in play here even before free agency. Teams must use their franchise tag by March 5 or lose it for the year.
So we will know by Tuesday if the Seahawks have an agreement in place or close to it with Clark on a long-term extension.
Asked Thursday if it is more important to the team to get a long-term deal done with Clark, Carroll said: “It is, ultimately, yeah.
“Frankie just turned 25. He’s still a very young football player. Made a huge step this year in terms of leadership, growth and maturity. It was so obvious. I was really proud of seeing that develop for Frank. He played great, too.
”Frank, he’s a very valuable football player. And that’s the process we’re in the middle of, and all that. I can’t tell you guys how that’s going to turn out.
“But it’s going to be positive for the Seahawks. And for Frank.”
