THE GOOD -- THE CONTRACT
First let’s breakdown the contract. This is a great contract for the Seattle Seahawks. The contract is basically a 3 year 23 million dollar contract. If after 3 years when Alexander is 32 and in the danger zone the Hawks can cut him and he would only be a 2.75 million dollar hit on the cap for 2009. At that point it that will be less then 3% of the cap. Basically the Hawks are banking that Alexander is going to be productive for three more seasons and if he is for a 4th then they have his rights. It is a really good deal for the Hawks.
In addition, Alexander is in his correct place in the pecking order. Matt Hasselbeck and Walter Jones both are making more money, as should be the case.
In regards to re-signing Shaun this was the right move, it let him get his ego trip of being the highest paid back, which is what his ego had to have and it avoided Shaun going on the opening market and getting mad. Shaun ego is unique enough that this could have gotten interesting.
From a Hawks perspective it is the right move, they are rolling, fans are juiced, they are coming off a Super Bowl why rock the boat.
JUST DOESN'T FEEL RIGHT
Let me say this, I don’t have a great feeling about it. Somewhere I really believe the right move was to let Shaun move on. This would have taken the biggest balls and would have defied all logic particularly when the Hawks were able to structure the deal the way they did.
But, it just doesn’t feel right. Alexander was perfect last year. Agreed. A large part of me thinks it was time for the Hawks to say we pushed ever button and we milked everything out of him and now it is someone else’s turn to deal with Shaun.
Call me crazy. And I will admit most of my pragmatic, numbers based historically based arguments of backs aging are eliminated by the structure of the deal. Nonetheless, somehow I think we will look back on this and say that it never worked the way we thought.
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4 comments:
I was ready to move on. I think more than anything I'm interested to see what a different style of running back could do behind this line. But, Shaun's a proven commodity, and I think the re-sign is good for the psyche of the Seattle sports fan who has seen superstar after superstar seek greener pastures elsewhere.
The Seahawks have to think about NOW as they have a small window to win a superbowl and you have to take advantage of that. It "feels" pretty right to me to try to keep a team in tact that finished with a 13-3 record and won 2 playoff games.
interesting thought David. Did you read Malcolm Gladwell's exchange with Bill Simmons, and their debate about players declining in the year following signing large contracts (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/060303)? Lets hope Shaun still has something left to prove.
I think right now that it is the right move. He is the most bankable part of the team. If he pulls a Terrell Owens though (which history shows that he may be capable of) we wind up in a world of hurt!
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