Lessening the sting from last year's Super Bowl loss to the Patriots, Russell Wilson and the Seattle Seahawks scored a touchdown on a last-second play when they secured an $87.6 million contract that, at least for now, makes Wilson the second-highest paid player in the NFL. It's a deal both sides of the negotiation should be happy with.
Throughout a long, occasionally heated negotiation, Wilson, as is his nature, was trying to go for the big play. He wanted $25 million a year. He wanted to set an NFL record for guarantees. But this year's market didn't leave that kind of an option. The deal was almost certainly going to come in at less than $22 million a year (what Aaron Rodgers makes), and record-setting guarantees are hard to obtain. As much as Wilson and his agent, Mark Rodgers, kept insisting he would play out the season making $1.542 million, that never made sense. Wilson deserved to be paid, and he accepted a strong contract. Call it a "checkdown" with a great pay-off. Or call it taking the safe play -- but the right play.
Every Monday during the season, Wilson meets with head coach Pete Carroll. In those meetings, Carroll always stresses to Wilson not to make a turnover. Once again, Wilson has made the smart decisions; playing out the year at $1.542 million without any guarantees beyond that was too much of a risk.
As for the deal itself, by accepting this deal and this structure, Wilson probably also left enough cap room for middle linebacker Bobby Wagner to get a four-year extension for between $9.5 million and $10 million a year.
The key for the Seahawks was striking a deal with Wilson that has a cap number around $5 million and with Wagner around $3.5 million. The Seahawks entered Friday with $9.27 million of cap room for their top 51 players. These two agreements leave the Seahawks in a position in which they might have to adjust a contract or two and not be able extend anybody else.
I'm sure there were times Wilson was wondering why the Seahawks wouldn't pay him $31 million in the first year like Cam Newton or Ben Roethlisberger got. After all, the Seahawks have one of the richest sports owner in Paul Allen. But it wasn't about Allen, or some point of pride for the Seahawks. The cap simply prevented it.
As a trade-off, the Seahawks were willing to pay Wilson $43 million between now and February, according to a source. Wilson couldn't pass it up.
Even with their leverage, for the Seahawks, it really was important to sign Wilson. He's one of the faces of the franchise, and even though he's one of the most focused quarterbacks in the league, the team didn't want to have the distraction of people constantly asking him about the contract all season. And as much as Wilson said he'd be willing to play out the deal, he could have gone through the season regretting not taking the money.
Too much was at risk. First, it would have taken Wilson years to make for the $20-plus million he would have passed on this season. He could have faced two seasons in which he had to deal with the non-exclusive franchise tag. With those tags, he might have been limited to making $47 million total between now and 2017.
There's little shame in being the second-highest paid QB in the league. And in short order, both of them could be looking up. Andrew Luck is going to get a huge deal given that a new salary cap will allow the Colts to open the purse strings even wider, as I wrote earlier this week.
But this won't be Wilson's last deal, either. The beauty of this deal is he could be a free agent in 2020, when he's still just 30 years old. That third contract could allow him to catch up to all the first-rounders he beats on Sundays and Monday nights.
It came down to the deadline, but in the end, this was a win-win deal for both sides.