4. The Minnesota Vikings used a "poison pill" element in their contract offer to Steve Hutchinson, making it nearly impossible for the Seahawks to match. The Seahawks responded in kind with a deal involving Nate Burleson. The NFL is now considering whether to make these type of deals illegal.
Someone please explain this.
In March 2006, the Minnesota Vikings offered Steve Hutchinson, an offensive guard on the Seattle Seahawks, a 7 year, $49 million contract of which $16 million was guaranteed. This contract offer had two poison pills in it. One was the salary structure, which would require the team to pay $13 million in the first year of the contract. That salary structure would apply to both teams equally, as the Seahawks would also have to pay $13 million in the first contract year, were they to match the offer.
The second was a clause that required Hutchinson to be the highest paid player on the offensive line, or else the entire contract would be guaranteed. Since the Seahawks had another offensive lineman with a higher salary (Walter Jones) and the Vikings did not, this clause would have required the Seahawks to guarantee $49 million, and it effectively eliminated the Seahawks' opportunity to match the contract offer.
In the wake of this contract offer, similar clauses have appeared in other contract offers (including, ironically, a contract offered to Vikings wide receiver Nate Burleson by the Seahawks), and the term poison pill has come to be more closely identified with the asymetrical-impact clause.
The poison pill in the Burleson Offer was that Burleson would get a huge bonus if he played a certain amount of games in the State of Minnesota.
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Took me a second, but I'm with ya!
That's awesome.
