Time for the Seattle Seahawks to prepare for life after Byron Maxwell
By Keith Myers
Seattle Seahawks cornerback Byron Maxwell is as good as gone. We might as well accept that.
Sure the Seahawks have said they’d like to re-sign him. They even said before the Super Bowl that doing was as a priority. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that getting him back for 2015 was ever a realistic outcome.
General Manager John Schneider indicated as much during his radio interviews this week. Schneider said he’d love to bring Maxwell back, but also indicated that the CB is going to get way more on the open market than the Seahawks are going to be willing to pay.
Here’s the full quote, according to Jayson Jenks of the Seattle Times:
"Based on what the landscape looks like from our eyes, he would be very highly sought after. Now, are we going to give it a good ride and try to do what we feel is appropriate for our organization and try to keep him? Absolutely. Is it going to be good enough? I can’t answer that. I really don’t know…Where his market goes, I think should be extremely high. Whether or not we’ll be able to keep him, I’m not sure. But we’re going to do whatever we can to try to do that."
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Basically, that’s Schneider admitting that Maxwell is gone. GMs don’t talk like that when they think there’s a chance that they can get a guy to re-sign. Schneider knows the market, and he isn’t willing to overpay for single guy.
And that’s exactly what another team is going to do: overpay. Maxwell is a very good player, but he isn’t an elite player at his position by any means. I expect he’s going to be paid like he is one this offseason.
Maxwell benefits greatly from playing with Richard Sherman and Earl Thomas. Thomas allows Maxwell to take risks that he won’t be able to take with another team. Sherman is so good on the other side that the Seahawks often roll Thomas over to Maxwell’s side of the field, providing even more help.
We have to remember that early in this season, teams were picking on Maxwell and getting away with it. Now imagine him as the number 1 CB on a team, and not having the help of a FS like Thomas. It isn’t a pretty picture.
That isn’t to say that Maxwell is a bad player, not by any stretch of the imagination. He’ll be a massive upgrade at the position for a lot of teams in the NFL. It is just that the salary he’ll command and his on-field production aren’t going to match.
Chris Harris’ contract in Denver is a good reference point for the top end of Maxwell’s deal. Harris signed for $42.5 million over five years with $24 million guaranteed. The bottom end is probably Dominique Rogers-Cromartie, who signed with Giants for $35 million over five years and $14 million guaranteed.
That’s a ton of money for a guy who would be the fourth-best player in the secondary for the Seahawks.
The Seahawks have other options. Jeremy Lane has proven that he can be the guy on the outside. Tharold Simon looked very good out there early in 2014, though he also looked fairly awful in the playoffs. Marcus Burley played well when pressed into duty because of injuries.
Schneider knows this, and knows that the Seahawks cannot address the rest of their team if they spend all their cap space on the secondary. Unless everyone has drastically over-estimated the market for Maxwell, he won’t be returning to the Seahawks for 2015.