An "outside the box" approach to the Wilson contract

[LTH]

They cant even consider doing anything in FA until RW and ML get solved...the longer they wait the more they lose in FA...

This FO doesn't have blinders on...they won't "wait it out" on those two. They have a plan and will follow it

I would hope so...

 

[Pandion Haliaetus]

Also we have no clue what the cap will actually be at it could be the rumored 142 or 145 or 150.

The cap is expected to hit a ceiling of 160 in 2016.

Teams in dire situations like the Cowboys could lobby for a bigger cap movement under the table to keep his boys. NFL probably also wants the most profitable Cowboys team bc they have a huge market.

So I could see more cap than anticipated for 2015 if its likely to go up anyway.

You can do plenty with an extra 3-7 mil.

 

[IndyHawk]

We are not cutting 5 good players just to get Suh..I don't know what you guys have been smoking..RW contract will have to be different than Jurruhs for Romo if we want to win championships and Defense wins championships..Offseason is weird in here sometimes- wow..

 

[fenderbender123]

Why would Wilson favor guaranteed money when he's never missed a game in his entire life? Just curious...I know little of salary caps and negotiations.

 

[mikeak]

I love how someone says something that SOME disagree with and suddenly they are the smartest person in their own opinion.

Lots of us has said a cap friendly deal / higher fixed / RW is to smart to take $20million.

Others disagreed

Doesn't make the OP the only one with this "revolutionary" thought....

 

[bigDhawk]

I think he was being sarcastic. No way we get Suh and Maxie is a long shot.

Maxie will get his. All about the second contract in this CBA.

Suh would make it rough for 2015 but impossible in 2016 once other contracts start "blooming". It would cost us Irvin and others and I don't think anyone wants to lose our depth or mid level players for one big DT no matter how good he is.

I think its funny when people say that we wont get player a or b because the salary cap wont let us all the while assuming they know what kind of money we will pay Wilson and our other free agents. What if Wilsons contract doesnt live up to expectations and we have more money to spend? Why are people acting like 10 and 20 million are the exact same?

If you think RW will sign for 10m/yr, you're out of your mind. He would have to accept 10m/yr for us to be able to afford Suh and even then, in 2016 it would likely mean we lose out of players like Irvin due to the ballooning of the contract and if you read between the lines with JS, you understand he's not interested in going outside to make a big splash, he'd rather pay his own.

If you pay attention to what the Seattle salary cap experts and pundits have been saying, these things are highly unlikely. Also the players union will not allow RW to take far less than previous precedents dictate because it affects everyone else as well.

RW may or may not take less, perhaps it's more guaranteed or more based on performance escalators or incentives. We don't know that.

The salary cap is a finite resource and a lot of the money is already spent and is untouchable based on IR, existing contracts, practice squad players, dead money, in season replacement player costs, etc. These things are not unknowns, John knows exactly how much he has to work with based on his 1-3 year projections.

There is an order to this and it's easy to understand if you pay attention. We've had JS/PC around for a while now and you can see the writing on the wall and what appetite they have for certain types of transactions or risk and which ones they don't. You can totally anticipate these moves based on previous deals and how they've written them.

I can tell you with a high degree of confidence RW will get somewhere between 18-22m. Wagner will get around 9m/yr. Maxie will get probably 6.5-7m a year somewhere else, likely Jacksonville or Atlanta. Lynch will probably get a 2 year new deal with 1 yr gteed with the second not gteed. First year will probably be like 10m with signing bonus prorated.

People take contracts based on contemporaries previous contracts. Also as our salary cap and revenue has increased, so will top end salaries. These things are quantifiable and they are the justifications for contract negotiations. They are known and can be used to accurately project players earnings.

But he's not taking less money if it's all guaranteed. $100 million guaranteed is $100 million, regardless of how many years it's spread across. And the guaranteed money is all most NFL players ever get anyway before they are restructured or cut. If Russell signs the hypothetical 10/100 fully guaranteed deal it would be the most lucrative in NFL history in terms of actual money paid by a long shot. Aaron Rodgers has the highest fully unconditional guarantee in NFL history at $54 million, on a 5/110 contract. There is no way ARod sees all $110 million of that deal before it is restructured. The actual money paid will be a lot closer to the guarantee than the full value of the contract. The team will make sure of that. Russell's proposed 10/100 'baseball' contract would almost double the money ARod will actually get paid. The player's union couldn't possibly have a problem with that.

The reason teams don't do long-term, cap-friendly, fully guaranteed 'baseball' contracts is they lose all power to restructure or cut a player as production declines later in the deal. The trade off, of course, is a much bigger salary cap hit over a shorter term deal. But if a teams knows they have a player that will be franchise cornerstone for a decade whom they won't ever need to restructure or cut, why not make his decade-long tenure as cap friendly as possible by fully guaranteeing his deal? Providing Russell is willing to spread his money out over a longer time frame, knowing he will get all of it eventually, then from the team's perspective they have traded long term cap relief for assuming the risk that Russell will be consistently productive over the life of the deal. As long as the team feels like that is an assumable risk, why not do it?

From Wilson's perspective, he has incentive to structure a deal like this. He is smart enough to realize his bread has been buttered thus far on the side of endorsements and branding made possible by being the charismatic QB of a winning, championship team. Regardless of his contract structure, he will get handsomely paid. So why cripple the winning potential of his team - thereby weakening his personal brand - for the sake of getting more of his money up front and blowing up the cap when he can actually get paid more money from the team long-term AND maximize the winning potential of his team, which equates to maximizing his personal brand?

Russell can go ahead an sign an Aaron Rodgers deal, and likely never win another Super Bowl as the championship team around him can not be retained. Or he can spread a higher guaranteed amount over a much longer time-frame and make a run at winning numerous rings, in the process becoming one of the most marketable sports celebrities ever.

 

[Krieg's list]

I'm not as well-versed on NFL CBA contract rules as many here, so forgive me if there are any obvious flaws in my reasoning, but here's an example of what I think the Hawks could do to create maximum cap flexibility (not maximum cap space) while still getting Russ his money...

Sign him to a true "extension" where he keeps his 3rd round salary for 2015 and then is "overpaid" to compensate for the remainder of the contract. I will choose a nice round number (4 years, $100 mil) for my example, although the annual salaries and signing bonus can be adjusted up or down as needed-- the structure is the important part here.

For the sake of simplicity, let's say a signing bonus of $20 mil and annual salaries of $20 mil from 2016 thru 2019:
Signing bonus: $20 mil (paid up front in 2015, prorated at $4 mil per year for cap hit)
2015 Salary: $1 mil; Cap hit: $5 mil
2016 thru 2019: Salary: $20 mil; Cap hit: $24 mil
Guaranteed money: $80-100 mil (last year could be unguaranteed depending on negotiations)

This still gives Wilson his deserved money (assumed here to be ~$20 mil per season) while allowing the Hawks to control WHEN they use the cap space opened by the artificially low salary in 2015 via rollover. The signing bonus compensates Wilson for the low salary in 2015 and the guaranteed $80-100 million is enough incentive to wait for the rest of the money.

In practice, I assume there would be small raises from 2016 thru 2019 to reflect Wilson's contract as a percentage of the (anticipated) overall team salary cap for each year as it increases. Perhaps something along the lines of $17/19/21/23 million from 2016-2019 would help Seattle balance their annual cap space better than a flat salary over the length of Wilson's contract.

Please note, the thought behind this contract structure is somewhat independent of (but may overlap) ideas to create cap space (via a "discount", horse-trading guaranteed/upfront money for less money overall, etc.) and focused more on creating cap flexibility. Pure and simple, the only way to "create" cap space is to get Wilson to take less money than he is worth, which I just don't see happening unless he insists on it... which I also don't see happening, haha.

Regarding the huge amount of guaranteed money, I just don't see this being an issue for NFL teams with young franchise QBs. Even if Wilson (or Luck, for example) were to suffer a season-ending injury, it's not like the team is going to cut him. He and his salary are going on IR until he returns, guaranteed or not. There is almost zero chance of a young franchise QB having his contract terminated or even renegotiated downwards in today's NFL. As such, I think it is a minimal risk to the team and therefore is reasonable to use as a bargaining chip with Wilson.

Personally, if I were JS, I would be toying with the idea of not extending Wilson at all and then threatening to franchise him in 2016/17 in order encourage a long-term contract after playing out his rookie deal in full. But I'm crazy and don't have to worry about alienating players/fans/media like JS does. The above contract structure is IMO a nice compromise between this nuclear option and a traditional new contract starting at current market value for 2015 that would limit Seattle's flexibility.

 

[Bobblehead]

My outside the box thought is:

Make him a player/coach and pay him mega bucks as a coach. and 0 as a player.
solves all our CAP problems.

OK I"m sure they have a rule against that.

 

[randomation]

My outside the box thought is:

Make him a player/coach and pay him mega bucks as a coach. and 0 as a player.
solves all our CAP problems.

OK I"m sure they have a rule against that.

Do they though? I'm not sure anyone has ever tried it.

 

[Bobblehead]

He will probably one day own the Hawks, hell give him a percentage right now.

 

[Krieg's list]

But he's not taking less money if it's all guaranteed. $100 million guaranteed is $100 million, regardless of how many years it's spread across. And the guaranteed money is all most NFL players ever get anyway before they are restructured or cut. If Russell signs the hypothetical 10/100 fully guaranteed deal it would be the most lucrative in NFL history in terms of actual money paid by a long shot. Aaron Rodgers has the highest fully unconditional guarantee in NFL history at $54 million, on a 5/110 contract. There is no way ARod sees all $110 million of that deal before it is restructured. The actual money paid will be a lot closer to the guarantee than the full value of the contract. The team will make sure of that. Russell's proposed 10/100 'baseball' contract would almost double the money ARod will actually get paid. The player's union couldn't possibly have a problem with that.

Good post with a lot of great points. But I am having trouble following your reasoning that marquee NFL QBs receive only roughly the amount of the guaranteed money over the course of their contracts.

You brought up Aaron Rodgers contract as an example in your post. Are you saying GB will force Rodgers to accept LESS money in 2018/19 when he is scheduled for $21 mil per season and would have no dead cap hit? How exactly do you propose GB handle this negotiation? Their only leverage is to threaten to cut him and hope he can't get more than that on the open market. We need only look at Peyton Manning's current contract with Denver to see that this would obviously not be the case.

You are right in that many other positions-- particularly RB-- sign lengthy extensions with meaningless unguaranteed years tacked on that will obviously never be paid because the team can simply cut and replace them with no cap hit. Franchise QBs CANNOT be replaced, and as such their contracts nearly always INCREASE rather than decrease, unless age/poor performance has lowered their open market value below their existing contract.

 

[Pandion Haliaetus]

The kicker here isnt about his past success, its about his future success.

And I think more or less we've seen Russell's ceiling as a QB with limited WRs and O-Line talent.

I highly doubt Russ wants to continue to rush for 500+ yards and take 40+ sacks a year. Niether does the team.

He needs the team to invest money and resources to protect him... You dont get that talent simply by having an ego and bleeding the team from its resources.

I think we'll see something that makes sense for both sides with an offensive focus to put players around him that can help him lighten his physical wear and tear.

 

[Hawknballs]

The butthurt by some people on this thread and assertion that i said i was some kind of genius is hilarious.

unplug for a few. Jesus. I guess I should have been more specific. "Basically almost everyone I talked too" said the idea was ludicrous.

Take everything everyone says completely literally much guys?

ukeface:

 

[QuahHawk]

10 years for 100 million guaranteed plus incentives and a signing bonus. The Hawks extend Lynch, re-sign Wilson and Maxwell. Have just enough to make another "outside the box" offer and sign Suh. *Sigh

A kid can dream cant he?

I could see a crazy contract like 10yr $200mil with $75m guarenteed

 

[Hawkfan77]

The butthurt by some people on this thread and assertion that i said i was some kind of genius is hilarious.

unplug for a few. Jesus. I guess I should have been more specific. "Basically almost everyone I talked too" said the idea was ludicrous.

Take everything everyone says completely literally much guys?

ukeface:

It's all about you always isn't it?

 

[TheHawkster]

Wilson will sign a 10 year deal for the veteran minimum.
Then, he'll wash Paul Allens cousins Toyota camry once a year for $20 million under the table.

 

[SomersetHawk]

The butthurt by some people on this thread and assertion that i said i was some kind of genius is hilarious.

unplug for a few. Jesus. I guess I should have been more specific. "Basically almost everyone I talked too" said the idea was ludicrous.

Take everything everyone says completely literally much guys?

ukeface:

That's funny, I've seen a fair few guys, myself included, post similar thoughts and never receive ridicule. If you can find threads where 'basically almost everyone' has ridiculed you then I'll be willing to refute that though.

Maybe the only thing worse than bringing up old threads to call people out over the trivial is posters starting threads to 'big-up' themselves. If you were to guess the contract then sure, that would be something. This? Not so much, particularly as he's not even signed a deal yet.

ukeface:

 

[kearly]

JS said that the Wilson contract will be creative and help offer the team flexibility. Read that earlier tonight, not sure where.

My guess is that this contract has lower guaranteed money, be very long, and might also be backloaded. That way it can delay the most painful years of the deal to a time when the NFL salary cap might be $20 or $30 million higher than it is right now. The lower guaranteed money would mean more money that is flexible, allowing Seattle to move money around year to year with Wilson's contract to maximize the teams cap efficiency. So for example, if you needed to free up $10 million suddenly, you could just take $10 million out of Wilson's salary that year and spread it out over the remaining years that follow.

JS's MO has been to go easy on signing bonuses and only guarantee the first year or two. I would applaud a fully guaranteed contract with favorable terms, but that hasn't been his style to this point. I also think Russell trusts his ability to earn non-guaranteed money, and is looking to earn as much as he can so that he might buy a team some day.

Edit, found the source:

Asked about Russell Wilson’s contract, Schneider hinted at Wilson being willing to get creative with his deal to give the team flexibility to continue winning, saying that “Russell Wilson wants to win championships” and that that means “thinking outside of the box a lot of times. We will do that with Russell. Russell knows there are certain dominoes that have to fall into place. … He knows, he gets it. He wants to win. He wants to win for a long time.” Schneider said he has already talked to Wilson’s agent and to Wilson but did not offer a timeline for when a deal may get done.

http://blogs.seattletimes.com/seahawks/ ... etirement/

Sounds like the process will be like Earl's extension, the Seahawks will wait until their offseason is done, then strike a deal after they know how the dominoes have fallen.

 

[Scottemojo]

JS said that the Wilson contract will be creative and help offer the team flexibility. Read that earlier tonight, not sure where.

My guess is that this contract has lower guaranteed money, be very long, and might also be backloaded. That way it can delay the most painful years of the deal to a time when the NFL salary cap might be $20 or $30 million higher than it is right now. The lower guaranteed money would mean more money that is flexible, allowing Seattle to move money around year to year with Wilson's contract to maximize the teams cap efficiency. So for example, if you needed to free up $10 million suddenly, you could just take $10 million out of Wilson's salary that year and spread it out over the remaining years that follow.

JS's MO has been to go easy on signing bonuses and only guarantee the first year or two. I would applaud a fully guaranteed contract with favorable terms, but that hasn't been his style to this point. I also think Russell trusts his ability to earn non-guaranteed money, and is looking to earn as much as he can so that he might buy a team some day.

Edit, found the source:

Asked about Russell Wilson’s contract, Schneider hinted at Wilson being willing to get creative with his deal to give the team flexibility to continue winning, saying that “Russell Wilson wants to win championships” and that that means “thinking outside of the box a lot of times. We will do that with Russell. Russell knows there are certain dominoes that have to fall into place. … He knows, he gets it. He wants to win. He wants to win for a long time.” Schneider said he has already talked to Wilson’s agent and to Wilson but did not offer a timeline for when a deal may get done.

http://blogs.seattletimes.com/seahawks/ ... etirement/

Sounds like the process will be like Earl's extension, the Seahawks will wait until their offseason is done, then strike a deal after they know how the dominoes have fallen.

This makes a lot more sense to me than the proposed fully guaranteed deals. I don't think Seattle is looking to revolutionize contracts. And Full G doesn't offer the flexibility mentioned by JS.

The biggest thing I got from John is they are active with free agency, something I assumed would be impossible this year. Which lets me fantasize about Suh a few more weeks.

 

[JesterHawk]

50 years 150 million roster bonus. $5 bucks a year plus superbowl incentives.

In seriousness though, is there a limit on length of contract? 15 years with a 150 million bonus and a tiny salary keeps the hit at 10 mil per year. You have to trust Russ though...