The arithmetic in the complex equation of
Russell Wilson's next contract might boil down to a single question: Are the
Seattle Seahawks willing to reward a player, even one as successful as Wilson has been, with a raise of roughly 20 times what he has been making in three years as their starting quarterback?
Certainly there are other issues at play in what has been anything but a smooth negotiation, but, at its core, the salient issue might be exactly this. This is not a situation where Wilson was a big-money bonus baby, or even a second-round pick. This isn't an already fairly handsomely compensated former high pick, like
Matt Ryan or
Matthew Stafford or
Joe Flacco, going from $8 million or $13 million or $15 million up to the $18 million-$20 million range. This is a young man who wasn't selected until 75th overall, who has played exemplary football but has certainly been aided by a stout running game and historically significant defense. He plays on a team loaded with guys already among the highest paid in the NFL at their positions. And he is scheduled to make just $1.5 million in 2015 and $3 million total over the four years of his rookie deal. Now he could quite logically argue that he merits being paid in the range of $20 million a year with the Flaccos and Ryans.
Taking what had been the best bargain in all of pro sports the past three years -- maybe in the history of the NFL -- averaging just $750,000 a year and paying him $20 million a season with, say, $80 million guaranteed, would be a huge pill for anyone to swallow. Other Seahawks stars like
Bobby Wagner still need new deals and the team just tore up
Marshawn Lynch's deal again a few weeks back. You just don't see that happen very often, a leap of that magnitude, for any player. It's one of many elements that make Wilson something of an anomaly and what makes the intricacies of this negotiation so compelling to watch unfold. There isn't a whole lot of precedent for a case quite like this, and the lack of any momentum to this point has been telling.
With the draft behind us, minicamps creeping up and the start of training camp a little more than two months off, the difficultly of swallowing a $19 million-a-year raise, as much as anything else, might best explain where we sit. What I know is the Seahawks' initial offer looked very much like the sort of band-aid bridge contracts that went to
Andy Dalton and
Colin Kaepernick, according to sources, with signing bonuses more in line with the $11 million Seattle handed out recently to
Richard Sherman and
Earl Thomas, and a pay-as-you-go structure like the lesser Dalton/Kaepernick deals. The average per year is nowhere close to the range of the top quarterbacks in the NFL, and with Ben Roethlisberger recently joining that club and
Andrew Luck and
Cam Newton poised to do the same in the next 12 months, I would be absolutely shocked if Wilson did any deal that wouldn't put him among the best in the game.
As we play this forward, there isn't any reason to believe either side will significantly alter its evaluation of the situation to the degree necessary to strike a deal -- nothing is going to happen between now and training camp to alter the landscape -- and the only way to compile more empirical evidence is for Wilson to play more games. That brings us back to what
I have written before, which is Wilson playing out his rookie contract is quite possibly the most likely outcome given the state of these negotiations. In fact, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that short of owner Paul Allen inserting himself into the process and issuing a mandate to get this done this summer, well, this will linger into 2016.
Given the diametric differences between the sides in projecting Wilson's value, I'm not sure how much impact a counteroffer would make. The gulf is that extreme. And, with the kind of guaranteed money -- fully guaranteed money -- it would require to wrap this deal up soon, short of Allen doing an about face for the organization, it's difficult to imagine it being bridged in the near term.
So the question becomes, at what point would Wilson, focusing on the season ahead and Seattle's arduous task to shrug off a heartbreaking
Super Bowl loss and get back to that game, just opt to shut down talks entirely? Because knowing him, and how he thinks and operates, that day might come sooner than some would expect. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if it comes sometime in July rather than September. It's hard to picture this being an open topic of discussion and something Wilson would entertain by the start of camp.
The moment Wilson walks back on a field for full practice he begins to incur injury risk. And, as someone inherently wired to gamble on himself, if Seattle isn't inclined to pay what his representatives believe is his market value after three full seasons and what he has accomplished to this point, I see him throwing himself into his contract year and cutting off talks. Avoid the distraction. Focus on the task at hand. And, should we reach that point, the question becomes, when does Wilson continue the discussions in 2016? Perhaps not at all. That wouldn't surprise me, either.
An exclusive-rights franchise tag could be worth upwards of $25 million for the 2016 season alone, and tagging him twice now is possibly pushing $55 million for two years. And if he played that out, he could potentially hit free agency before age 30, he would have finally made some real NFL money over two seasons, and, if he stays on anything close to the career arc he has been on, you're looking at potentially the most coveted free agent in NFL history. What's that going to be worth in 2017 NFL dollars, especially with the cap continuing to soar between now and then? Rather than go through another round of back-and-forth with the Seahawks, perhaps the simplest solution -- barring Allen simply making Wilson a $20 million man -- might be to let Seattle make a choice: Meet Wilson's pre-existing price (and that might soar depending on his production and any other quarterback deals that get done this year), franchise him, or trade him.
If I am the NFLPA, I would love to see that scenario unfold. Salaries rise the most when the very best players get to the market in their prime -- as evidence I present the example of Suh, Ndamukong shattering J.J. Watt's salary on the open market -- and the overwhelming reality is that healthy top quarterbacks simply never are out there for open bidding. In baseball, top pitchers routinely get to that stage, and earning records often follow. With Wilson's agent, Mark Rodgers, so steeped in that culture, I have a hard time seeing him relent here, regardless of the fact the NFL has silly and draconian funding stipulations (the fact that Allen, one of the richest people on the planet, would have to put $80 million in escrow up front if he issued a contract with that much money fully guaranteed isn't going to elicit a lot of tears in the agent community).
Say what you want about Rodgers, and the fact that he has worked primarily in baseball -- we all know how different baseball and football contracts are in terms of truly guaranteed money -- but he hasn't backed down with top clients in the past, he has done massive deals before and he isn't some rube who is going to flinch or blink just because he hasn't ever completed an NFL blockbuster deal. I'm sure he makes an easy target for many in the football media establishment, with Rodgers a perceived "outsider" and all, but no there might be no agent in the game with a more profound relationship with his client than Rodgers with Wilson, and I wouldn't mistake his lack of football dealings with naivety. I don't foresee client or agent being pushed around.
Just because it is outside Wilson's nature for him to consider a holdout or even a nominal transgression like skipping some OTAs, I wouldn't mistake that for weakness. Being the ultimate team player doesn't require that player to sign a contract he is not perfectly comfortable with. Playing out his rookie contract -- and giving the Seahawks a fourth straight year of ridiculous value in the meantime -- without complaint or incident would be a gift to the team in and of itself.
Sure, getting this deal done now would take Seattle being willing to set a precedent with guaranteed money that its peers around the NFL would hate, and I can certainly understand them balking. But after playing for peanuts for three years that's hardly Wilson's problem. Getting him signed long-term right now is either essential or it is not. He is either the most important asset to the franchise or another malleable cog in a larger machine.
That decision, and the corresponding financial equation, doesn't have to be made now, or this summer, or even this year. But Wilson's development doesn't indicate that price will be coming down at all, and time will tell if there is a solution to this riddle that includes increasing the quarterback's annual compensation 20 fold.
