Wilson Signs largest contract in NFL History

[Dr. Strangelove]

Sorry I'm a little late to the party guys but I'll keep my thoughts short and on point. Imo, this is the only logical move the team could make. I know 35 per is a lot of money but as mentioned before, give this a couple years and we will look back on it and it will be a bargain. Goff, Wentz, Dak, Watson will all get big deals . I'm thinking all of them will be at least high 20's to low 30's. Can anyone say with a straight face that they would take any of them over prime years of RW?
Then just think if Mahomes backs up last season with another MVP and setting records. The kid will likely get 40 or more. And if Mayfield becomes what people think he might. There's some huge signings coming.
As for the notion that we are all blind homers and Wilson fan boys. Simply untrue and stupid. Everybody here has seen Russell's bad games and been plenty critical. He is still a winner and when playing against the MVP caliber guys out there has usually been up to the task and often outplayed them.

 

[JMR]

If Clayton is right about the specifics of the deal, this will be in the 15% of the cap range in the first year of the extension and then less after that. If that's true, then I think this is a pretty team-friendly deal despite being the biggest in NFL history.

 

[JMR]

Overthecap has contract details for RW posted. The extension caused his 2019 number to go up by $1M, and he'll account for 14% of the total team cap this season. Next year if the cap goes up to the $200M as projected, he'll be around 15.5%. Hard to look too much further out, but those numbers don't look all that crippling to me. Rodgers and Ryan signed their deals last year, and they will both be > 16% of the team cap in 2020.

 

[Warden]

This deal helped us lose Frank Clark. You pay one player so much of your cap dollar, you don’t have enough money to pay all the other players. In the short run, namely 2019, this deal makes the team as a whole weaker

 

[Anointed One]

This deal helped us lose Frank Clark. You pay one player so much of your cap dollar, you don’t have enough money to pay all the other players. In the short run, namely 2019, this deal makes the team as a whole weaker

Signing Clark instead of Wilson would've hamstrung us even more... Especially when Clark isn't even a premier Pass rusher... Clark just signed with Chiefs for 21 million per year, signed Clark to a five-year, $105 million deal with $63.5 million guaranteed. he got as much as guaranteed money as RW, a franchise QB did... Making him the highest paid DE in the NFL - That's crazy...

 

[blstoker]

Signing Clark instead of Wilson would've hamstrung us even more... Especially when Clark isn't even a premier Pass rusher... Clark just signed with Chiefs for 21 million per year, signed Clark to a five-year, $105 million deal with $63.5 million guaranteed. he got as much as guaranteed money as RW, a franchise QB did... Making him the highest paid DE in the NFL - That's crazy...

Yeah, I figured Clark's asking price had more to do with him being traded than Russell's contract. Now, sign Ziggy Ansah to a prove it deal and draft a pass rusher in the first and we still have $10 million more in cap to work with.

 

[flyerhawk]

This deal helped us lose Frank Clark. You pay one player so much of your cap dollar, you don’t have enough money to pay all the other players. In the short run, namely 2019, this deal makes the team as a whole weaker

You think we should have given Frank Clark 105 million dollars?

 

[JMR]

This deal helped us lose Frank Clark. You pay one player so much of your cap dollar, you don’t have enough money to pay all the other players. In the short run, namely 2019, this deal makes the team as a whole weaker

No, I disagree. We lost Frank Clark for a variety of reasons, but we could have easily afforded to have him play here under the tag in 2019 so, no, RW's contract didn't force Frank out of town.

 

[Warden]

Signing Clark instead of Wilson would've hamstrung us even more... Especially when Clark isn't even a premier Pass rusher... Clark just signed with Chiefs for 21 million per year, signed Clark to a five-year, $105 million deal with $63.5 million guaranteed. he got as much as guaranteed money as RW, a franchise QB did... Making him the highest paid DE in the NFL - That's crazy...

Never ever said we should sign Clark over Wilson, just states that Wilson’s demands to be the highest paid player in the league makes us weaker

 

[WizardHawk]

Never ever said we should sign Clark over Wilson, just states that Wilson’s demands to be the highest paid player in the league makes us weaker

Which makes you weaker:
One talented player already known to win games and get the team to playoffs year after year, but takes a chunk of the payroll.

Or have another 7 or 8 % of cap space and be like all but 4-5 other teams in the league throwing everything at the wall year after year trying to find that star player to build around?

 

[JMR]

Never ever said we should sign Clark over Wilson, just states that Wilson’s demands to be the highest paid player in the league makes us weaker

Makes us weaker than what? A team w/o Russell Wilson? A team with RW playing out the final year of his deal for a whole $1M less of a cap hit in 2019 than what he is now while under contract thru 2023? Is it really reasonable to not expect him to get his payday like pretty much every other QB? His extension has minimal impact on the 2019 cap, and even next year both Rodgers and Ryan account for a higher % of their team's cap.

 

[jerseyhawksfan79]

I don't get why people think franchise QBs grow on trees.

 

[Podunkparte]

Paying Russell Wilson a little less doesn't make paying Frank Clark more than he's worth a smart idea.

 

[Warden]

Makes us weaker than what? A team w/o Russell Wilson? A team with RW playing out the final year of his deal for a whole $1M less of a cap hit in 2019 than what he is now while under contract thru 2023? Is it really reasonable to not expect him to get his payday like pretty much every other QB? His extension has minimal impact on the 2019 cap, and even next year both Rodgers and Ryan account for a higher % of their team's cap.

You won’t see Rodgers and Ryan winning any Superbowls in the near future either

 

[Podunkparte]

You won’t see Rodgers and Ryan winning any Superbowls in the near future either

You also won't see teams without a franchise QB playing in that game, which is what you're potentially looking at by not paying Russell Wilson.

 

[Anointed One]

Never ever said we should sign Clark over Wilson, just states that Wilson’s demands to be the highest paid player in the league makes us weaker

QB's are always the highest paid in the NFL... Didn't Clark just become the Highest paid at his position? You can't have the best of both worlds... I applaud the Hawks for not giving into his demands...

So you're saying, make a DE the highest paid at his position and find another QB? How'd that workout for the Denver the past few seasons?

 

[jerseyhawksfan79]

Many of us know this first hand...We've seen the Hawks throughout the years have solid defenses that were playoff worthy but the lack of a franchise QB most of the times kept them just on the outside looking in. Yes it would have been nice to pay Clark but it's way more important to pay our franchise QB who by the way keeps our playoff/SB window open.

 

[JMR]

You won’t see Rodgers and Ryan winning any Superbowls in the near future either

Yeah, well my crystal ball is not as good as yours, so I cannot really argue against you here.

But I will throw out some facts:

Even with this extension, RW is only the 6th highest paid QB (in terms of cap hit) for 2019 and 5th for 2020. In 2021, he'll barely be making more than Matt Stafford (he of 0 career playoff wins).

There was simply NO WAY we were going to choose a DE over a franchise QB, and that's what every team in the league would have done as well. Frank Clark is now the 3rd highest paid 4-3 DE on the planet for 2019. The path to not being able to afford a good team around our star QB included paying Frank Clark QB money. We drafted Frank in the 2nd round, got 4 years of service out of him, and then traded him for 2 really good draft picks and $17M of 2019 cap space. It was a no-brainer.