Seahawks extend GM John Schneider

The Seattle Seahawks have signed General Manager John Schneider to a contract extension, making him one of the league’s highest paid executives.

Earlier this week we posed the question of how concerned should Seahawk fans be that GM John Schneider and head coach Pete Carroll had yet to sign contract extensions with the team. Both were entering the final year of their deals heading into 2016.

Today, one half of that duo has been rewarded with a new contract.

And rewarded handsomely.

ESPN 710’s John Clayton was the first to report that the team and Schneider have agreed to a new contract, and that was later confirmed by team owner Paul Allen.

According to Clayton, the deal is expected to be in the neighborhood of Baltimore GM Ozzie Newsome’s $3.75 million a year, the highest in the NFL. Length of the deal is not known at this time.

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Schneider’s signing was likely the most important of the two. At 45 years of age he would be in high demand on the open market, and it was revealed last year that he had an out clause in his deal that would allow him to leave if his hometown Green Bay Packers ever came calling. Meanwhile, the 64 year old Carroll has long been assumed to want to stay in Seattle beyond this year.

The two have formed a formidable duo, completely turning around the Seahawks franchise after arriving together in 2010. At the time, there was concern over how the team structured their new leadership, with Carroll being hired first and being heavily involved in the selection and eventual hiring of Schneider.

Since then they’ve formed a close friendship and a strong working relationship: “John and I are really connected in every aspect of what we’re doing,” Carroll said recently. “I think he’s the best general manager in football. I think he’s the best guy to work with. He does everything he can, one effort-wise and intensity-wise, to take advantage of every opportunity to add to our roster. He’s great at that. And his guys do a great job of evaluating and working through every opportunity. They compete like crazy to get that done.”

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Now Carroll is left as the only lame duck of the duo, but is expected to sign his new deal sometime in the next week or two.

Meanwhile, it’s now a near certainly that Schneider will be around long enough to do something he didn’t get to do when he arrived, select his own head coach when Carroll calls it quits.