O'Neil: Leroy Hill agrees to deal with Seattle
No contract specifics yet. 710 ESPN Radio also confirms.
almost 3 years ago
BrianL
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I hope that's sarcasm...
Part of the reason why the Seahawks were a little constrained with salary cap last year is because he isn’t afraid spend. Fortunately, he doesn’t spend like Snyder does.
Sam Bradford, future Seattle Seahawk.
by Carl Shinyama on May 1, 2009 12:05 AM PDT up reply actions
It's not sarcasm at all
Ruskell is notorious for being a hard ass with player salary negotiations. Hutchinson, DJack, and Engram all left town because Ruskell wasn’t going to budge on what he thought they were worth. He pulled the tag on Hill and risked losing him to take full advantage of the leverage he gained by drafting Curry. Ruskell isn’t afraid to go out and sign players but he’s not going to overpay.
He didn't take advantage of the leverage that he gained from drafting Curry, apparently.
He ended up giving Hill more than he originally offered. Not exactly what I would call being a hard ass.
I’m pretty sure that Ruskell wasn’t being cheap with Hutchinson. I may be wrong, but I seem to remember that Hutchinson would have been paid rather close to what Walter Jones was getting. Just not as much. That’s why the poison pill worked because he was offered, just a bit more than Jones made from Minnesota, and in his contract, Hutchinson is supposed to be the highest paid lineman on the team, or the whole contract is guaranteed. I believe Hutchinson got like only 5 million more or so but still $3.5 million less than Jones on his deal from Minnesota than what he was offered from Seattle.
D-Jack, he just didn’t give Jackson the extra money that he was verbally promised from Whitsitt. That’s not being cheap, that’s saying, “Though shit, I’m not giving you money that’s not in your contract”. He traded Jackson because he didn’t want to deal with the headache that was Jackson complaing about not getting money that was not in contract.
I do not deny that he offers players what he thinks they’re worth, but it can’t be denied that he isn’t afraid to break some bank, either.
Sam Bradford, future Seattle Seahawk.
by Carl Shinyama on May 1, 2009 12:58 AM PDT up reply actions
Nice Job.
Yes that is exactly what happened with those guys. I don’t get why Hutchinson leaving is so often pegged on Ruskell as a mistake when Hutchinson clearly conspired with Minnesota to get out of here. Maybe we could have used more resources to try and keep him, but we gave it more that due diligence.
Jackson’s money whining is not uncommon for a guy coming off of the season he had just had, but not getting paid a ton. The Whitsitt verbal agreement thing was a lot of crap. I have no idea to what extent it is even true, but ultimately the current GM is gonna pay up if he thinks the player is worth that extra money to keep around and keep happy, and he didn’t.
As for the 38MM/6 that Hill reportedly got, although this is more than 36MM/6 we had heard about before, we don’t know how the guarantees were structured in this deal or the previous offer. Still, I also had thought that the number would go down. I suppose the point of removing the tag was to take away his option to get 8+ MM this year. The tag was not only leverage for negotiations, but also protected Hill from other teams. Ruskell rightly calculated that we no longer needed that protection and by removing the tag, kept us from needing to pay Hill 8+MM this year. Also, although the Hawks may have upped their offer a bit, there is no telling how far down Hill’s camp came from where they had been at. Obviously the 2 MM was not the whole difference because they wouldn’t have dragged this out over that.
Transition tagging Hutch instead of franchising him was an attempt to save money.
I like how Ruskell handles salary negotiations but he’s a frugal man and has been willing to lose players rather than over pay. The whole point of my comment was that I was confident Ruskell got fair value on the Hill deal.
The difference the franchise tag and the transition tag was a whopping $500,000.
In terms of relativity, that’s just slightly more than a bag of peanuts at a 5-star restaurant when comparing the amount that franchise tags and transition tags command.
No, he used the transition tag in good faith to let Hutchinson set his market value so that they could negotiate a new deal because he wanted to pay Hutchinson closer to $6 million a year whereas Hutchinson wanted $7-$8 million a year. Ruskell wanted to stay closer to what the pay scale was for LG’s at the time, but he allowed Hutchinson to let the market dictate his value, which was the fair thing to do. That was the intent behind using the transition tag far more than any intent there was to save money.
Sam Bradford, future Seattle Seahawk.
by Carl Shinyama on May 1, 2009 9:28 PM PDT up reply actions
Oops
I meant to type “just a little bit less than Jones” in the third line of the paragraph.
Sam Bradford, future Seattle Seahawk.
by Carl Shinyama on May 1, 2009 9:29 PM PDT up reply actions
Great News! Seahawks.com also has the story.
How does our offseason look now? Nice work by the FO.
by Airborne Hawk Guy on Apr 30, 2009 5:11 PM PDT reply actions
What an amazing offseason!!!
(Mora Jr.’s on 710am right now)
by Grimm Blackwood on Apr 30, 2009 5:15 PM PDT reply actions
2 mil more than our original offer
Not too shabby, ANYONE HAVE A LINK TO THE AUDIO THOUGH?
2/3 of the world is covered by water. The rest is covered by Marcus Trufant.
I'm guessing
that it is backloaded, in a way that he’ll end up restructuring later to “help the team.”
The 15.5M bonus is the real payday, and he’ll probably count towards the cap like 3-5M the first 2 years, with around 6-7 being later.
No
But every rookie contract I can think of is heavily backloaded. Darren McFadden’s base salary was $295,000 last season and his cap number was only $2.6 million. That’s on a 6 year, $60 million contract. Hopefully more than what Seattle will pay Curry, but probably comparable.
In general, draft picks are signed in the preceding couple of weeks before training camp.
"Part, fools!
Put up your swords. You know not what you do."
by Fearless Frog on Apr 30, 2009 8:45 PM PDT up reply actions
Nice
I must say, I am certainly not disappointed with this off-season.
by Pessimistic Optimist on Apr 30, 2009 5:41 PM PDT reply actions
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