DK Metcalf not in Seahawks mandatory minicamp. Team did not excuse his abscence
DK Metcalf is using the leverage he has with the Seahawks.
The team’s star wide receiver entering the final year of his rookie contract was absent from Seattle’s mandatory veteran minicamp as it began Tuesday. That’s as he awaits a new contract for 2023 and beyond that could pay him $25 million or more per season.
The Seahawks did not excuse Metcalf from these only three mandatory days of their offseason training program, a league source confirmed to The News Tribune Tuesday.
The NFL collective bargaining agreement gives teams the ability to fine players about $90,000 total if they miss all three days of the mandatory minicamp. There are no indications whether the Seahawks will fine Metcalf.
Last summer when veteran left tackle Duane Brown and safety Jamal Adams sat out practices from spring into Seahawks summer training camp before the final seasons of their contracts, coach Pete Carroll acknowledged they were making “statements.”
That’s what Metcalf is apparently doing, while he feasibly can.
A five-figure fine for a man who will earn $3.99 million for the 2022 season isn’t an expensive way to leverage his team for a new deal.
The fines get much more expensive for skipping days of training camp, $50,000 per day in most cases for veterans per the league’s CBA.
Both Metcalf and Carroll have said this offseason they expect the Seahawks to get a new deal with the 24-year-old pass catcher who set a franchise record with 1,303 yards receiving in 2020.
Metcalf said in January: “I’m not trying to leave.”
“I will say, we are going to get something done,” Metcalf said last month on Hall of Fame tight end Shannon Sharpe’s podcast for Fox Sports. “I think I am going to be in Seattle for the next coming years, yes, sir.”
He showed up for the start of the team’s voluntary offseason workouts in April. He was pictured smiling at Seahawks headquarters.
He had surgery this winter to fix foot pain he played through last season. He has been away recently from voluntary workouts rehabilitating from the surgery.
But the team expected him here this week.
Metcalf became a 2020 Pro Bowl selection when he set that Seahawks record with 1,303 yards receiving. That was in the second season of the rookie contract he signed after Seattle traded up into the bottom of the second round to get him in the 2019 NFL draft.
Metcalf’s draft classmate and former University of Mississippi teammate A.J. Brown just got a $100 million, four-year deal from Philadelphia in a trade from Tennessee to the Eagles last weekend.
It was the latest example of how the market for wide receivers has skyrocketed this offseason. That has Metcalf in line for at least $25 million per year for 2023 and beyond.
That might sound prohibitively expensive for the Seahawks — today. But their buying power is about to soar. The league’s salary cap is going from $182 million last year to $208 million per team this year to perhaps $225 million or more in 2023.
The NFL’s new media-rights revenues split evenly among its 32 teams kicks in next year when Metcalf’s new contract will begin.
Plus, the Seahawks no longer have to pay Russell Wilson. They traded their franchise quarterback to Denver in March.
Wilson’s contract ran through the 2023 season. This time next year he will be seeking a new deal likely to be worth at least $50 million annually, what Aaron Rodgers re-signed for with Green Bay this offseason.
That’s now Denver’s matter, not Seattle’s.
In April Carroll said he, his team and Metcalf remain all positive toward a new deal by this summer.
“We’re really communicating great. And DK, we’ve been (on) a great wavelength to move forward,” Carroll said. “And hopefully it will all work out. “We don’t plan on him going anywhere else. We want him to be with us.”
This story was originally published June 7, 2022 at 1:16 PM.
