Russell Wilson’s new deal

[Wolvie]

You say it hasn't worked well the last 2 years. Didn't the Seahawks go 12-4 in 2020? I mean if that is not working out then I would hate to live up to your standards. And that was with a roster that most thought was bottom tier in the NFL. I remember one analyst predicting the Seahawks even with Russ that year would finish with the worst record in football.

And if you think Russ is only worth 4 more games than Geno then we need to have a talk. Look at the Colts the year they lost Manning. Went from top-3 team in football to worst team in football. All because of Manning being gone. Wilson to me is worth at least 7 games over a QB like that of Geno's ability.

To address your Manning vs. Wilson comparison, when Manning went down, there was no plan B for Indy, and Manning was still technically counting against their cap. Wilson was traded away which freed up cap space and provided Seattle with time to alternative arrangements and spend the extra cap space on other positions that were lacking. Also, that Indy offense was based around Manning, which was not the case in Seattle. Manning was coming off of an MVP season (IIRC) and was in his prime as one of the all-time greats. I love Russ, but he is a tier or two lower than Manning. Russ also finds a lot of his success by extending plays with his legs, but last year Russ was really starting to show his age as he had seemingly lost a gear.

 

[cdumler7]

When you add the same contingencies to the contracts of the five QB paid more than him, does he still stay as 6th.

that is a great question and maybe later have to go look into that. The reality is again though that the overall numbers a person sees for a contract are not the true numbers that end up getting paid out. You pay attention to the true guaranteed money (some guarantees are not actually guaranteed) and when the team can really start changing up the contract if need be. The nice thing for the Broncos with this contract is the lower cap hits are now when the Broncos don't have a ton of draft capital. Allows them to sign some big contracts if needed to add to the team and then later down the road fill out the roster through the draft. Honestly it is how most QB contracts are built in early years low cap hits and later years with throw away years to help with the cash flow throughout the contract.

 

[LGM]

So you're basically hoping that spending your cap space now on improving your other weaknesses and having an avg. Game mgmt style qb could get you to a similar record. Reallocation basically... damn liberals have invaded America's pasttime!! Lol

 

[cdumler7]

To address your Manning vs. Wilson comparison, when Manning went down, there was no plan B for Indy, and Manning was still technically counting against their cap. Wilson was traded away which freed up cap space and provided Seattle with time to alternative arrangements and spend the extra cap space on other positions that were lacking. Also, that Indy offense was based around Manning, which was not the case in Seattle. Manning was coming off of an MVP season (IIRC) and was in his prime as one of the all-time greats. I love Russ, but he is a tier or two lower than Manning. Russ also finds a lot of his success by extending plays with his legs, but last year Russ was really starting to show his age as he had seemingly lost a gear.

And understand I'm not saying that Wilson is Manning by any means, but it does show that when a star QB leaves teams usually struggle big time to replace what they brought. And if Geno Smith is your plan A for the replacement of Wilson I would say that is just as bad as what the Colts did. We are talking a career back up now being asked to start and perform well.

As for Russ and losing a gear we shall see how that plays out. Most of this offseason and the building of this offense around Wilson has been about it being successful but also setting up Wilson to take fewer hits. He is coming to a system that is built around scheming guys open. It is why Adams could go crazy in Green Bay even with teams knowing he was the one true guy you had to stop. Green Bay worked hard with Rodgers to stop running around so much and taking so many shots. Wilson has from all I have heard bought into this plan and understands it is important to take what a defense gives you. He trusts Hackett way more than any OC the Seahawks have put out there.

 

[Wolvie]

And understand I'm not saying that Wilson is Manning by any means, but it does show that when a star QB leaves teams usually struggle big time to replace what they brought. And if Geno Smith is your plan A for the replacement of Wilson I would say that is just as bad as what the Colts did. We are talking a career back up now being asked to start and perform well.

As for Russ and losing a gear we shall see how that plays out. Most of this offseason and the building of this offense around Wilson has been about it being successful but also setting up Wilson to take fewer hits. He is coming to a system that is built around scheming guys open. It is why Adams could go crazy in Green Bay even with teams knowing he was the one true guy you had to stop. Green Bay worked hard with Rodgers to stop running around so much and taking so many shots. Wilson has from all I have heard bought into this plan and understands it is important to take what a defense gives you. He trusts Hackett way more than any OC the Seahawks have put out there.

Yeah our OC schemes has been something of a disaster. Way too vanilla, and perhaps that was where the problems truly lay. It will definitely be an interesting year. We'll all find out soon enough. If the hawks win 7 games, I'm ecstatic.

How many do you need the broncos to win in order to feel satisfied with the trade?

 

[Mountain Bronco]

Wilson's contract is brilliantly structured with relatively low cap hits the next two years when we need to take care of others and is really only a 4 year deal with minimal dead money after that in what should be a drastically increased cap. If he performs how he consistently has over his career this is a win win. The reason Seattle didn't do this deal with Wilson is because they had piss poor roster management the last few years and had to blow it up. Two 1sts a 3rd and a player for a was bad then and hasn't aged well. There is no reason to pay a top tier QB when you are looking at a 3-4 year rebuild in the face, which is exactly why they didn't go get Mayfield or Jimmy G.

 

[cdumler7]

Yeah our OC schemes has been something of a disaster. Way too vanilla, and perhaps that was where the problems truly lay. It will definitely be an interesting year. We'll all find out soon enough. If the hawks win 7 games, I'm ecstatic.

How many do you need the broncos to win in order to feel satisfied with the trade?

For just this year I would say anything short of making the playoffs would be tough to justify. Over the entirety of the contract anything short of a Super Bowl trophy added to the franchise would maybe sour a bit of this move. I mean I'll enjoy the ride if the Broncos are competitive in a tough division for the next say 5-7 years because Wilson is in town, but you don't usually make this kind of move unless you are thinking Super Bowl.

And agreed the offensive schemes that Carroll wants to run honestly are pretty outdated. Even in college when he had a star QB he still wanted to lean into the run game a whole heck of a lot more. This is why I never thought Lock had a chance to win the job because he takes way too many chances with the football. Carroll is a great coach don't get me wrong but I don't think he is built to have a franchise QB and really trust them to lead the team to victory. He could have Aaron Rodgers and I think he would still lean into the run game.

 

[Sportsguy9695]

Great to get this done before the season so now all they need to worry about is piling up the w’s. But they should of took his age into consideration if you ask me.

 

[SpringStein]

Great to get this done before the season so now all they need to worry about is piling up the w’s. But they should of took his age into consideration if you ask me.

Agree with getting it done sooner than later. Have you seen that the Broncos could get out of the deal in 4 years? I don’t think 38 for him to still not be highly competitive Is too much exaggeration.

 

[CEH]

I'm pretty sure @Draft Crazy is talking about me here. Let me elaborate on that a little more. For the Seahawks, the difference of Russ vs. Geno as 2 wins in the season. Let's say it is even higher at 4 wins in the season. Geno's cap hit is $3.5 million this year. I wouldn't want him for anything more than that. While Russ would have still been relatively cheap for the Seahawks, we all knew he wanted that blockbuster deal that he simply wasn't worth. Don't get me wrong, I love what Russ has done for us, but we've always been a run-first team with an amazing defense. Russ excelled as a ++game manager that could win games late in the 4th quarter when it came down to that. During Russ's time in Seattle, we were hardly ever down by more than a possession. This wasn't the case the last two seasons, and when we had to "let Russ cook", the results weren't what we expected. Russ is going to be 37 and making $55 million. There is no way the Seahawks could succeed with the contract Russ got with Denver. I was definitely on the bandwagon for trading him while he had a lot of trade value. I hope nothing but success for Russ AFTER this season, because we have your first round pick, which hopefully we can use to get our QB of the future. In the meantime, I'm happy to have Geno as our bargain game-manager QB. Hopefully with the money saved, we can slingshot that into next year's cap, as this is most definitely a throw away season after week 1. Week 1, obviously, is our Superbowl.

win games late? sign me up.
could have used that last year in the last 4 1/2 games of the year when Denver went 0-4 in single possession.

 

[Wolvie]

win games late? sign me up.
could have used that last year in the last 4 1/2 games of the year when Denver went 0-4 in single possession.

The problem is that last year we somehow started losing those close games instead of always winning them. The trick with Russ is to rely on the run game and intentionally keep games low scoring, and thus close. Then let Russ do his work late, when the defense has been playing against the run all day, and they won't know what hit them

 

[CEH]

The problem is that last year we somehow started losing those close games instead of always winning them. The trick with Russ is to rely on the run game and intentionally keep games low scoring, and thus close. Then let Russ do his work late, when the defense has been playing against the run all day, and they won't know what hit them

luckily we have maybe the best 1-2 RB punch in the league and the top end speed to hit the deep pass when teams crowd the box

 

[Wolvie]

luckily we have maybe the best 1-2 RB punch in the league and the top end speed to hit the deep pass when teams crowd the box

yeah, it may very well come down to whether the coaching staff lives up to the hype.

 

[CEH]

yeah, it may very well come down to whether the coaching staff lives up to the hype.

yes young coaches need to shine.

 

[Sharkonabicycle]

I mean it's an okay signing. QBs are just commanding too much these days IMO and the only way around that is drafting one and hoping it pans out (which might be the new NFL, especially how College teams are changing their game to adapt to the NFL). That said, we're seeing ridiculous contracts given out to guys like Watson (hasn't played in a year and is suspended for basically another), Murray (lol the midget? REALLY!? He hasn't won anything in postseason and has an attitude), Rodgers (nearly 40), etc.

Wilson is the one guy that actually makes sense to me... I have some doubts about his ability to stay in the pocket, not drop back too far, and hold on the ball too long (3rd worst in the league) but the guy still has the best deep ball in the league and is 100% a leader with work ethic and does his best to rally a team.

IMO he could've asked more. It's a B grade from my point of view. It will be sad to watch Seattle get torched Monday by Wilson... because Seattle's pass rush looks wildly inconsistent (based on preseason) and they can't stop the run whatsoever (yep, that's a 3-4 for ya) so it's going to be a LOOOOONG night.

 

[cdumler7]

I mean it's an okay signing. QBs are just commanding too much these days IMO and the only way around that is drafting one and hoping it pans out (which might be the new NFL, especially how College teams are changing their game to adapt to the NFL). That said, we're seeing ridiculous contracts given out to guys like Watson (hasn't played in a year and is suspended for basically another), Murray (lol the midget? REALLY!? He hasn't won anything in postseason and has an attitude), Rodgers (nearly 40), etc.

Wilson is the one guy that actually makes sense to me... I have some doubts about his ability to stay in the pocket, not drop back too far, and hold on the ball too long (3rd worst in the league) but the guy still has the best deep ball in the league and is 100% a leader with work ethic and does his best to rally a team.

IMO he could've asked more. It's a B grade from my point of view. It will be sad to watch Seattle get torched Monday by Wilson... because Seattle's pass rush looks wildly inconsistent (based on preseason) and they can't stop the run whatsoever (yep, that's a 3-4 for ya) so it's going to be a LOOOOONG night.

I guess to me while the overall money of these deals is crazy and the guarantees even are pretty darn crazy, the cap hits continue to actually stay pretty darn low. That is what matters is how a team can manipulate the cap to continue to field a full roster. Such as for the Wilson deal these first two years his cap hit will be less than 10% of the cap. Wouldn't surprise me if even year 3 of the deal is less than 10% with some of the expectations of the rising cap. If you can keep the QB cap hit below 12.5% then good chance you can still field a pretty darn good team around them.

And I know some are freaking out about the years 4-7 of this deal with his cap hits but I highly doubt he hits those numbers. The reality is especially the last 2-years of this deal are throw aways that both sides for sure will come back to the table to figure out a future plan. Guarantees run out at that point for Wilson and the Broncos will not want to see him having those huge cap hits.

My guess is at worst there will be one year of this deal where Wilson is seeing maybe 15% of the cap or more be attributed to him. I could be wrong, but seems like most teams are trying for about 3-year windows with a top tier QB then having one bad year of cap hit to then reset and open up another 3-year window.

 

[Draft Crazy]

Want to give @cdumler7 some kudos in this discussion. Well done, Carl!

 

[CEH]

Except, he's taken a lot of hits in Seattle behind a below average OL.

well Manning has neck fusion surgery and went 4 more years.

 

[SpringStein]

One thing I haven’t seen discussed much is the $50MM bonus that Russ received. Would that have happened without Walton’s purse strings? It’s good to have an owner with the cash flow necessary to make big investments like that.

 

[CEH]

think i read Denver has $40M to roll over.

i think the sign bonus pro rated salary hits this year and the first two year are the same. if anything the cap space goes down in 2022?

what if Amazon Apple Google the companies that own the USA want to get in on NFL streaming.

the cap will sky rocket