Looks Like Someone Has a Sixpack of the Mondays

1. As a fan of a team with a quarterback that has yet to cement his status as the "guy," I find the situation out in Seattle fascinating. I can't be the only one beginning to get rather curious, wondering just what the Seahawks are thinking as they do the contract negotiation dance with Russell Wilson. Since the GM there--John Schneider--has ties to both our organization as well as McLovin', I find myself pretty glued to the soap opera playing out in the Pacific Norhtwest. It really is an amazing spot for a team to be in, despite all the potentially franchise-ruining outcomes.

2. Prior to Russell Wilson arriving in Seattle, they were not exactly killing it (four straight losing seasons I believe is the stat everyone likes to bandy about). Since Wilson took over as the starter in training camp his rookie year, the 'Hawks have gone 42-14, making Wilson the winningest quarterback in that time period. They have appeared in two Super Bowls in Wilson's three years, winning one, and coming up one yard/playcall short on another. One has to believe that just about every quarterback in that scenario gets P-A-I-D.

3. I totally get the joy that accompanies getting the kind of bargain the Seahawks are receiving by paying such a quarterback $1.5 million. Any time you can save $20 million on a player, you have to call that a win. The player, on the other hand, might not find it nearly as, uhhh, satisfying. Even if the Seahawks had to pony up an exclusive-rights franchise tag next season and pay Wilson somewhere close to $25 million in 2016, their average cost per season with Wilson under center will still look extremely tantalizing, even more so when you factor in the success. As unsexy as it sounds to compute an average cost for a player over a period of time, in today's NFL, achieving true cost savings at crucial positions can easily be the difference between winning big and losing regularly.

4. The Seahawks have what we call a "high-class" problem. They are loaded with talent. They have to make hard decisions because they know that the pie can only be divided up so many ways. When the pie is gone, there is no more pie. Some teams...ahem...find themselves looking at their own list of free agents every year and talking themselves into paying up to keep someone because he is the best of the lot. That can lead to retaining a guy that, just for example, might have a pectoral muscle that tears every ten and a half months.

5. Working in Seattle's favor is their success in the draft, which is the real source of my fascination with the Seattle situation. I sure hope that we are on our way to having the kinds of problems Seattle has, and under McLovin', that is possible, given the blueprint we see out west. They have hit on top draft picks like Russell Okung, Earl Thomas, Golden Tate, Bobby Wagner and Russell Wilson. They have gotten low picks right like Richard Sherman, Kam Chancellor, J.R. Sweezy and K.J. Wright. Think about these middle-tier signings they made that look brilliant: Brandon Browner came from Canada and Breno Giacomini came off of Green Bay's practice squad. You don't find yourself in the position of having to pick and choose which above average players to keep unless you successfully collect a bunch of above average players. Still...getting overly cute with the quarterback that has quite literally lead your team the last three seasons looks like playing with fire. Is it possible that the Seahawks think that there is a grouping of players that they could pay for and keep that would sustain their current level of success--that does not include Russell Wilson? Would they take their defense and whatever best quarterback they can find and roll the dice? At the moment, it would seem the answer is: maybe...just maybe (spoken like a line in the movie where the speaker kind of looks off in the distance and maybe chews some straw). One thing that the Seahawks don't appear to be: scared.

6. The list of differences between where the Seattle franchise is and where the Redskins franchise is stretches out about as long as the actual distance between the two cities. McLovin' certainly gives us hope that we could very well join the "big boy" teams in the league that get to make such difficult decisions, but I wonder how this would play out if it was going down here. Can you imagine watching our team make it look--very publicly--like we were prepared to let a guy who captained two Super Bowl squads walk? Don't get me wrong--this thing will almost certainly be resolved. I am sure there will be a fair amount of commenters who will argue that Russell Wilson is "not as good as people think he is" but count me among those who feel that he is worth the cost. More than just general banter about this topic and how we would act if our team was in Seattle's place, I suppose we could look into our crystal ball and try and predict a similar scenario with a player currently on our roster. No, I am not thinking about Robert Griffin III either. Is there a player on our roster that you can see McLovin' seriously consider letting walk because he needs the money for everything else?