Why Russell Wilson’s April 15 deadline to Seahawks on new deal truly doesn’t change team’s plan
Nothing has changed.
What was true last year, at the end of last season in January, last week and on Tuesday remains so today.
Russell Wilson wants a new Seahawks contract.
His market remains the same, too, which is at the top of the NFL market for quarterbacks. That means the richest contract in the league for the QB who has won more games in his first seven regular seasons (75) than any other in league history. Wilson still will get a deal worth more than the $33.5 million per year with $98.2 million guaranteed Aaron Rodgers got from Green Bay in his extension last summer to become the league’s highest-paid player. Since Rodgers’ signed that, it has been Wilson’s benchmark for negotiations with Seattle.
The Seahawks still regard Wilson as they have since he led them to the Super Bowl in consecutive seasons, 2013-14. He’s their franchise centerpiece. There remains no Plan B for Seattle. It’s Wilson as the team’s quarterback, for as long as coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider can—or want to—fathom.
None of this has changed with Wilson imposing a deadline of April 15 to get a deal done.
Everything else is leveraging, posturing and window dressing.
On Tuesday, when the Seattle Times reported Wilson had given the team the deadline. A league source with knowledge of the talks between the quarterback’s side and the team told The News Tribune they were not progressing or even as recent as has been portrayed.
The source’s actual response when asked about the talks between the Seahawks and Wilson: “Talks?”
That gives a logical reason for Wilson’s artificial deadline; a call to action to spur more substantive and substantial progress toward an offer Wilson wants.
The Seahawks aren’t exactly spooked or ticked about any of this.
They have been budgeting for this richest of new deals for Wilson, have been since the summer of 2015. That was when Seattle, coming off those consecutive Super Bowls, gave Wilson a $87.6 million extension through 2019. At that time it was just behind Rodgers’ for richest contract in the NFL.
Carroll, Schneider and the Seahawks knew then that Wilson’s second contract with the team would expire before Rodgers’ got his new, mega third deal with Green Bay. They knew Rodgers would by 2018 re-set the market, and that Wilson would then be poised to set it yet again the following year.
That year is now. Wilson’s deadline is trying to ensure “now” means before the season, or even the offseason, begins. The Seahawks’ official offseason workouts begin at team headquarters on April 15.
Wednesday, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reinforced the fact the Seahawks weren’t taken aback by Wilson’s deadline. He reported Wilson issued it to the team in January.
The Seahawks, of course, regard Wilson’s as their highest priority of three cornerstones to retain for 2020, and beyond.
When asked at the league’s scouting combine five weeks ago about negotiations with Wilson since the Seahawks’ season-ending playoff loss at Dallas Jan. 5, Schneider gave a hint to why Wilson has given the team a deadline to accelerate the discussions.
“We’ve been in communication with his agent, Mark, and I’m sure we’ll continue to talk,” the GM said Feb. 27. “There are some guys who are unrestricted free agents right now, so we try to work through that process, the different phases of it. There’s several guys that have one year left on their contract in terms of extension.”
Those guys include Bobby Wagner, the co-franchise cornerstone with Wilson. The All-Pro linebacker’s contract also ends after the 2019, and he’s also about to get the richest contract in the league at his position.
The Seahawks also have Frank Clark’s contract situation. They gave him their franchise-tag designation for 2019 last month, yet are continuing negotiations on a longer-term extension. The tag designation kept Seattle’s leading pass rusher from leaving in free agency upon the end of his rookie contract. It also entitles him to $17,128,000 guaranteed for this year.
The team and Clark have a deadline of July 15, a real one, with actual ramifications afterward. League rules state a team that does not reach agreement with a franchise-tagged player on a multi-year contract by that date cannot reach one until after the coming regular season ends; such a player can only play that season on a one-year deal for the team that has given him the tag (unless the team rescinds it, with the Seahawks have no intention of doing with the 25-year-old pass rusher).
Jarran Reed’s rookie contract ends after 2019. The Seahawks would love to keep their breakout star from 2018 who had 10 1/2 sacks at defensive tackle. That’s Aaron Donald-like production inside along the line of scrimmage.
Plus, the Seahawks currently own just four picks in the draft that begins April 25. That’s the fewest in the league and would be the fewest in a draft in team history. Schneider is on a mission to do what he has done in seven consecutive drafts: trade his first-round choice, and others, to acquire the additional picks he needs this spring more than he ever has as Seattle’s GM. That means more phone calls and shopping with other teams this month, time away from getting Wilson what he wants.
“Obviously,” Schneider said at the combine of Wilson, “he’s incredibly important.”
That remains true. Even with this deadline.
So what happens if the sun rises in Seattle and everywhere else on April 16—that, by the way, remains a certainty—and Wilson doesn’t yet have a new deal?
That in no way means he won’t get one. And Wilson isn’t going to be picketing Seahawks headquarters in Renton wearing a sandwich board and refusing to play. He will be Seattle’s quarterback in 2019 no matter what, fulfilling the final year of his contract that is paying him $17 million with a $25.3 million salary-cap charge this coming season.
Talks will continue, perhaps at a more productive pace and quality thanks to the deadline, perhaps into the summer. Schneider and the Seahawks have made a habit out of extending veteran core players in June through July. Wilson re-signed the first day of 2015’s training, in late July. Wagner got his second Seahawks deal one day after Wilson got his.
Yet the Seahawks have incentive to get a new deal done with Wilson soon. That would solidify their financial plans for 2020 and beyond. It would set the deal around which all others will revolve. And it would get Wilson his top-the-market money before that market potentially re-sets again—if, say, the Rams want to preemptively extend their Super Bowl quarterback Jared Goff with a mind-boggling deal beyond his rookie one that ends after this year.
The sticking points that could push talks with Wilson’s side past April 15 are what they always are for the richest deals in this league: guaranteed money, specifically when and how that cash gets guaranteed. The Seahawks have as NFL precedents to consider the fully guaranteed contract Kirk Cousins got a year ago from Minnesota, for $84 million, and Cousins is nowhere near the caliber of Wilson.
Mark Rodgers is a baseball agent foremost. His background is in striking deals that are fully guaranteed, baseball’s norm. But the Seahawks do not guarantee at signing seasons beyond the first year of a foundational player’s extended contract. At they haven’t been guaranteeing second years of deals up to now.
Aaron Rodgers got his four-year, $134 million deal with the Packers last summer, but it’s the guarantees that matter most to players past their 30th birthdays in this non-guaranteed sport. Of Rodgers’ NFL-leading $98.2 million guaranteed, $57.5 million came in a signing bonus he got to cash immediately. A total of $78.7 million was fully guaranteed at signing, according to CBS Sports’ Joel Corry, a former agent. The rest are roster bonuses, incentives and future guarantees against injury.
Wilson has as many Super Bowl rings as Rodgers. And he’s five years younger.
Matt Ryan got a record $94.5 million fully guaranteed at signing when he re-signed with Atlanta last summer. He collected another $5.5 million in guarantees for his 2021 season in a clause that triggered last month. So that’s become $100 million for Ryan within a year of signing.
Ryan is three years older than Wilson. He has yet to do what Wilson has: win a Super Bowl.
You can see where the floor is for Wilson’s side in these negotiations with Seattle.
Yet another factor that further complicates Wilson’s new deal with the Seahawks: no one, including Schneider and Matt Thomas, the team’s chief salary-cap calculator, knows what the league’s new collective bargaining agreement is going to look like for the years that Wilson’s new contract will mostly cover. The current CBA ends after the 2020 season.
Schneider said at the combine he was meeting with the owner’s executive council to learn more about where talks on a new CBA with the players’ union may go. The GM said this when asked how the new CBA affects negotiations on new Seahawks contracts this offseason: “That’s a great question. Great question. That’s awesome. That’s going to factor in. That’s definitely a factor.”
For now, the franchise tag remains an option in 2020 for the Seahawks to retain Wilson, if the two sides can’t reach an agreement on a new contract. Asked if the tag might go away in the new CBA, Schneider said five weeks ago: “I have no idea. No idea.”
Those are the many issues that make this Wilson deal that’s eventually going to happen more complicated than it simply happening already. Those details make Wilson’s April 15 deadline, in practical application, more a goal than an ultimatum.
That, like everything else in this negotiation, hasn’t changed.
This story was originally published April 3, 2019 at 1:11 PM.
