Everybody knew that the Seahawks signed Eddie Lacy to an incentive-laden contract. In fact, he just made his first bonus this Monday, a $55,000 payment for weighing in under 255 pounds. What was not widely known was the exact nature of the rest of his incentives, until today.
The contract numbers come out
ESPN’s Sheil Kapadia had the story this morning, and it’s a bit of an eye-opener. Lacy’s weight incentives are actually quite minor compared to his game appearance clause, and are dwarfed by his yardage clause.
The information is also available on the excellent site for the financial side of sports, spotrac.com.
For those of you who really hate clicking links, a brief breakdown:
Weight bonus: $385,000 total for six weigh-ins. Eddie maxes out if he comes in at 250 in June and August, 240 or less at four checkpoints during the season. I don’t think he’ll cash in on all of those, but he’ll definitely be in good shape.
Game bonus: every week Eddie makes the roster for the game, he cashes another $62,500. That runs up to a nice round $1 million. So his incentive to be healthy enough to make the roster is nearly three times the weight clause.
Yardage bonus. This is the one that really pays off – for the Seahawks. We’ll just put up a little chart below for your viewing pleasure.
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800 yards – $250,000
900 yards – $500,00
1,000 yards – $750,000
1,100 yards – $1,000,000
1,200 yards – $1,200,000
Note the yardage bonus is not cumulative. Lacy gets the bonus for the highest yardage number attained. Also note that the numbers differ slightly between ESPN and Spotrac. The former lists the yardage bonus for 1,200 yards at $1.3 million, while Spotrac list a bonus of $1.2 million. Either way, he could get paid.
Lacy’s guaranteed money is $2,865,000. His incentives could total an additional $2,585,000 (or $2.685 million if Kapadia’s numbers are right).
Good for Lacy, great for the Seahawks
Lacy has to love the gameday roster bonus. Show up ready to play every week, add a cool mil to the bank account. To be sure, he’ll need to be in good shape, as the Seahawks have far too many options in the backfield, assuming decent health. I have no doubt that if he munches a dozen of Top Pot’s apple fritters and shows up at 265, he’ll miss that $62,500. Expensive dough.
As I wrote above, I love the yardage bonus. Let’s say Lacy is good enough to keep Rawls, Prosise and the rest of the crew on the bench , enough to pick up over 1,200 yards. If that happens, the Seahawks will be in the title game. They could likely be in the title game with a three-headed ground attack, too.
Eddie Lacy had a weight problem in his years with the Green Bay Packers. This contract has that issue all sewn up. If Lacy weighs in at 260, he’ll miss the weight bonus, will likely be sitting at home on the inactive roster for a few games, and certainly can’t pick up any yardage. It’s a great contract, and doesn’t make unreasonable demands of Eddie. If he can ball at 250, he’d miss out on about $220,000, but could still rack up another $2 million. And the Seahawks could rack up another title.