The catch to the D.K. Metcalf rumors

I am – like many of you – a bit confused on what to expect from D.K. Metcalf or — given recent rumors — what I should expect Seattle to receive for him.

So over the past couple of days, I’ve made a few of inquiries, and applied my experience covering the league in general and John Schneider specifically. While I don’t have any definitive answer on what precisely is going on, I have some pretty good ideas, but before we get to those, a couple of quick links.

I have wondered over the past month whether the frustration I felt regarding the Mariners’ offseason would prevent me from feeling the burst of irrational optimism that I like to mainline each spring.

Thankfully, I discovered that I remain a complete and total idiot when it comes to hoping for the best from my baseball team, and I wrote about that in my most recent column in The News Tribune:

• Spring training remains the season of dumb hope

  By Danny O’Neil, The News Tribune

📘 The backstory 📗 

Since Seattle chose him in the second round of the 2019 draft, Metcalf has played in six NFL seasons. And in each of those six seasons he has caught:

• more than 50 passes

• for at least 900 yards

• and scored at least five touchdowns

There’s exactly one other player who has started his career with six straight seasons in which he met each of those benchmarks: Randy Moss. I’m not saying Metcalf is on par with Moss. I am saying that Metcalf’s consistency over the first six years of his career is truly remarkable.

He is – justifiably – well-paid, having signed a three-year $72 million extension to his rookie deal. He has one year remaining on that contract in which he is scheduled to be paid $18 million in salary. However, because of the NFL’s convoluted accounting rules, he is scheduled to count almost $32 million against Seattle’s salary cap.

Seattle has three options here, which I’ll list in what I believe is the declining order of probability:

1. The Seahawks can sign Metcalf to a contract extension.

   This would commit more money to Metcalf long-term but lower the short-term salary-cap space he would occupy in 2025.

2. They can trade Metcalf.

   The motivation here is not salary-cap savings. Trading Metcalf would leave another team responsible for Metcalf’s $18 million salary, but it would result in $21 million of what is referred to as “dead money.” This is the amount of money Seattle would have to account for under its salary cap for a player who is no longer on the roster (for a case study on this subject, see: Wilson, Russell with the Broncos).

3. They can keep Metcalf on the current deal.

   In this case, he will consume just over 10 percent of the team’s salary cap. Next year at this time, Metcalf could leave as an unrestricted free agent and if he did, the highest compensation Seattle could possible receive is a third-round compensatory pick in 2027.

That sums up where things stand. Now let’s get to the chatter:

Last Friday, Corbin Smith said that the Seahawks weren’t actively shopping Metcalf, but if they were to trade him, the Packers were a team to watch.

Pete Bukowksi, who covers the Packers, confirmed this.

Matthew Schneidman, who covers the Packers, reported that the Packers and Seahawks have not discussed a potential trade for Metcalf.

Now, I have a long-standing policy of steering clear of semantic battles over what constitutes a “negotiation” or a “discussion” or an “offer.” As such, I do not wish to try and tell you which of these conflicting reports is most accurate.

However …

As I mentioned, I talked to a couple of people this weekend about the situation. I also consulted with one of my most valuable sources: The Voice of Experience.

🛑 Current situation 🛑 

Here’s what I think is happening:

1. The Seahawks want to extend Metcalf’s contract.

   In fact, they kind of need to if he’s going to stay on the team That salary-cap footprint is really large. This puts them in a difficult negotiating position if Metcalf is asking for more money in that extension than Seattle wants to pay.

2. Metcalf is seeking more money than Seattle is currently offering.

   This should not be considered all that surprising. There was a bit of standoff three years ago before Metcalf signed his last extension. He missed what was the mandatory three-day minicamp.

Three years ago, Seattle could wait Metcalf out. This time, Metcalf has more bargaining power. His worst-case scenario is playing next season for $18 million and then being in line for unrestricted free agency.

So what if Metcalf remains insistent on an extension bigger than Seattle is willing to offer?

Well, that’s where the possibility of a trade comes in. That would require three things to occur:

1. There is a team that is willing to agree to Metcalf’s price on an extension;

2. Seattle decides that price is too high;

3. That team offers Seattle sufficient trade compensation to agree to a deal.

This scenario has happened exactly once in John Schneider’s 15 years as general manager. Back in 2019, the Seahawks applied the franchise tag to Frank Clark before ultimately trading him to the Kansas City Chiefs.

The Seahawks had wanted to keep Clark that year. They did not, however, want to sign him to a contract that would average more than $20 million annually.

Any thought Seattle might keep a deal below that threshold was eliminated, however, when Demarcus Lawrence – who’d been tagged by the Cowboys – signed a five-year, $105 million deal to remain in Dallas. That effectively set the market. Clark’s deal in Kansas City? Five years for $104 million.

That was after the Seahawks had accepted a 2019 first-round pick and 2020 second-round selection as well as a swap of third-round choices.

Could that happen here? It’s possible.

However, Schneider has usually been the guy acquiring high-profile veterans in offseason trades, not giving them up. I still think the most likely scenario is that Metcalf winds up signing an extension with Seattle.

If the two sides can’t agree, though, do keep an eye on Green Bay.

Exactly one word came to mind after I read the following Tweet from ESPN’s Brady Henderson: