In response to the Minnesota Vikings crafting an offer sheet to All-Pro guard Steve Hutchinson that Seattle couldn't possibly match, the Seattle Seahawks made an attempt to shed some light on the ridiculousness of clauses like that by extending one of their own to Vikings restricted free agent WR, Nate Burleson.
The contract is for 7 years and $49M, with a $5.25M signing bonus. Now, Burleson is not worth nearly that much money, but the years and total value of the contract is exactly what Minnesota offered Steve Hutchinson. Obviously, that was a direct shot at them.
Even more so, Seattle included two "poison pills" into the offer sheet. The first one guarantees the full value of the contract if Burleson plays a certain number of games in the state of Minnesota.
The second guarantees the entire contract if Burleson's annual per year average exceeds the highest paid RB on the team.
Both clauses would guarantee the deal if Minnesota were to match it.
Now, I had originally hoped that Seattle would take the high road in all of this. Now that they've actually pulled the trigger, I applaud the front office for a.) being creative, while b.) fighting back.
There are some that viewed Seattle's attempt to re-structure Walter Jones contract as an underhanded way of "screwing" the Vikings and Steve Hutchinson. These same websites gave the Minnesota Vikings, Hutchinson and Tom Condon a free pass for constructing an offer sheet that was different in two NFL cities.
I imagine that some NFL pundits are going to view the Seahawks offer as being petty, even though they viewed the Vikings offer to Hutchinson as "creative". Who cares? The bottom line is that these clauses are foolish to begin with, and Seattle is just merely pointing this out. Sometimes it takes something ridiculous to happen for people to realize that there's a problem.
What's not absurd is the Seattle Seahawks re-signing of FB Mack Strong to a 3-year deal, $3.1M deal. This will likely be Strong's last NFL contract, and it's good that Mack will retire a Seahawk. Some NFL teams care about that sort of thing, and some don't.
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