With Russell Wilson, the Seahawks decided not to…
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Tuesday’s news that the Seahawks will trade quarterback Russell Wilson to the Broncos was a long time coming. The seeds were planted longer than a year ago, when public signs of frustration from Wilson first surfaced.
I’ve studied this one carefully for years. The Seahawks, after three wage-scale seasons with their 2012 third-round pick, had to pay market-value contracts to Wilson twice, in 2015 and 2019. Three years ago, with agent Mark Rodgers playing hardball and insisting on a new deal before the start of the offseason program, the Seahawks gave Wilson a then-record deal worth $35 million per year.
Rodgers, a one-player agent who can drive a hard bargain without worrying about the impact of such stances on his other clients, has twice insisted on four-year extensions. That approach gets Wilson back to the table more quickly. And when the Seahawks gave Wilson his latest deal, they knew that a very difficult decision was four years away. Would they give their 34-year-old quarterback a market-value deal, or would they say, “Enough”?
It’s the core dilemma of the Let Russ Cook narrative. If the Seahawks don’t regard Wilson as a quarterback through whom the offense should run, they will eventually tire of paying him market value. Likewise, if they don’t want to pay him market value, they should trade him to someone who will. Now, they have.
Next year, the Seahawks were staring at another effort by the Tom Hagen of football agents to force Seattle to pay huge money. If the team decided not to do it in 2023, it would have been harder to get the package they finagled now, since the new team would have to both compensate the Seahawks and give Wilson a gigantic new deal.
Considering those factors, now was the right time to do it. Could they have gotten more last year? Maybe. But they weren’t ready to move on. Now, the Seahawks were willing to close the book on the team that went to consecutive Super Bowls and start over.
It was inevitable. They decided not to delay it, and they probably did better in the trade than they would have, if they had waited.
With Russell Wilson, the Seahawks decided not to delay the inevitable
