Aaron Curry Trade Appears Imminent

Getting word that Aaron Curry was not at practice today, and that his locker is cleaned out. I also saw on Twitter that Danny Oneil of the Seattle Times is reporting that Curry’s contract is being restructured to help facilitate the trade.

The contract restructuring is key to this getting done. Curry is guaranteed 5 million this season, and the New team would have to pay 11/16 of that. Unlike in baseball, the team’s cannot send money along with a player to help cover the salary. By restructuring the deal, Seahawks and Curry can switch some (or most) of that salary to a “signing bonus” and pay him it now, thus reducing the amount owed to Curry by his new team, and making it easier to facilitate the trade.

No idea where he’s being traded, but the Eagles and Falcons would be the obvious places I’d expect.

I’ll update this this post as more information comes in.

Update – 12:42 PM – It would appear that I was wrong on my guess as to the team Seattle is trading with. The Oakland Raiders appear to be the team that is trading for Curry. The Raiders play a 4-3 defense, so I’m not sure that this is a good fit for Curry. At this point, I’d say that Curry is best suited to be an inside linebacker on a 3-4 defense.

Update – 12:52 PM – Not 2 seconds after I read that Curry to Oakland was conformed, I got rumors that the Jets and Patriots were both interested too. Unsure if that means anything at this point, or if the Oakland trade is still a done deal. We’ll see. I do know that the Media group has been assembled so an announcement is coming. I also know that the team order them pizza so it might still be a wait.

Update – 1:17 PM – Trade is officially to Oakland. Seahawks will get 2 draft picks, one in 2012 and one in 2013. We don not yet know what picks they are, or if they are conditional picks (meaning that the pick the Seahawks get is dependent on how well he plays)