K.J. Wright will offer Seahawks no discount to return in 2021

The Seattle Seahawks need to make tough decisions on which of their free agents to try to re-sign. K.J. Wright is one of them. But Wright told Jim Rome on Rome’s CBS Sports Radio show on Monday that he will offer Seattle no discount to return. And Wright had excellent points in why he wouldn’t.

Let’s be clear about this. People do a job in exchange for money. While there have been several athletes who seem to have taken less money to stay with a long-time team, that shouldn’t be the expectation. Players should get paid what they are worth just like all the rest of us should at our jobs.

K.J. Wright and the Seahawks

Wright’s reasons for not giving the Seahawks a discount are simple

"I do way too much on the football field to take a discount. It makes absolutely no sense. If you want to win all these championships and look good on Sundays, you’ve got to compensate your guys that are making plays. I have a family and I’m trying to set up long, long-term success for my family."

So no fan should really argue with that, right I mean, we do want our favorite teams to be successful and for those teams to keep really good players. Maybe we even want those players to feel the same way we do about our favorite team, but we need to remember that we are the fans are they are the players who earn money playing a game.

NFL players take a lot of physical punishment and have a short time to make as much money as possible for maybe the rest of their life so no one should blame them either for making as much as they can in the time they have.

But players also have families, of course, and a lot of the time the money that athletes can make will be generational wealth that a lot of their families may have never had. Why should a player play for a discount when you are talking about money that will support their families for decades to come?

K.J. Wright has been very good for the Seahawks and I hope he returns in 2021. But he is correct. He shouldn’t play for less money in Seattle than somewhere else simply because he has always played for Seattle.