Report: Seahawks haven’t ruled out trading for Baker Mayfield

Thursday fans received an update on the quarterback competition of the Seattle Seahawks, with offensive coordinator Shane Waldron stating that Geno Smith is ahead of Drew Lock simply because of his familiarity with the system. However, Friday a report from Jeff Howe of The Athletic indicates that there a new entrant could enter the competition.

Or, perhaps more accurately, that the Seahawks are exploring the option of adding a known name to the competition, if the circumstances are right.

So, according to this report, the Hawks aren’t the only team still in pursuit of Baker Mayfield, and the holdup for both Seattle and the Carolina Panthers in trading for Mayfield has been the desire for the Cleveland Browns to eat some of Mayfield’s contract. Specifically,

The Panthers and Seahawks still haven’t ruled out acquiring Mayfield, but they’ll need the Browns to take on a much greater portion of his contract than they’ve offered so far. It’s unclear how far apart the sides have been, but the Browns want their contractual intake to be commensurate with the asset they receive in return.

Interestingly, June is just around the corner, and that makes things interesting in that any trade executed on June 2 or later would allow either the Browns or the acquiring team to restructure Mayfield’s contract using void years to push some of Mayfield’s $18.858M 2022 base salary into future seasons. Obviously, it’s all up in the air at this point, and with more than two months until training camp it’s extremely unlikely this is the last time Mayfield and the Seahawks are linked this offseason.