A New Bobby Wagner Contract – Can The Seahawks Afford It?
By Dan Viens
For 3 years now we’ve heard about The Plan; how it’s possible for the Seattle Seahawks to build a dominant, young football team and keep it together. THIS GM has it figured it out. THIS Head Coach is appealing enough to players to get them to buy in. THIS owner has the financial wherewithal to pull it off. There have been plenty of doubters; not only fans of rival teams envious of the plan’s early success, but also homegrown observers who’ve grown cynical thanks to numerous bumbling sports leadership of year’s past.
One crucial element of The Plan is identifying the key, core players essential to long-term success, and locking them into contracts before they hit free agency. Much attention recently has been placed on getting that done with QB Russell Wilson this season, and rightly so. But MLB Bobby Wagner may actually be a better litmus test of how persuasive and creative the Seahawks front office will be. Wilson will get done no matter what. Even if negotiations were to go horribly wrong, the team would simply slap the franchise tag on him next year and figure something else out until they can leverage a deal. Franchise QB’s are too hard to find. But a case can be made that MLB isn’t as much of a commodity, that effective players are easier to find, they they may even be interchangeable to some extent. I’ve heard some fans express that the team shouldn’t “overpay” for Wagner; the “we love him as a player but don’t want him to blow up our salary cap structure” stance.
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It’s an argument not without merit. But if you’re a Seahawk fan worried that it’s too unrealistic to keep all these core guys together under current NFL rules you can rest easy knowing two things:
The Seahawks believe it can be done.
They’re right.
Let’s take a deeper look.
Next: The MLB Landscape