Seahawks extend Schneider’s contract; next up Carroll
Published 9:45 pm Monday, July 25, 2016
It’s that time of the football year again.
No, not training camp. Not just yet. That begins for the Seattle Seahawks on Saturday at team headquarters in Renton.
In the days before then, the league is full of contract talk. Negotiations. Signings. Rumored negotiations for hypothesized signings.
The Seahawks have all that going on this week.
John Schneider’s five-year contract extension was first. The deal team owner Paul Allen confirmed via Twitter on Sunday night is believed to put the team’s seventh-year general manager at or near the top of the NFL in GM salaries, near $4 million annually.
And it’s doubtful the Seahawks would have finished Schneider’s extension — his contract was set to end after the 2016 season — if they weren’t about to extend coach Pete Carroll’s deal, too. There is no way the Seahawks are going to let the leader of the franchise’s most successful six-year run reach the end of his contract — especially with an NFL team back in Los Angeles and Rams coach Jeff Fisher entering the final year of his deal. L.A. is where the 64-year-old Carroll built a college dynasty and philanthropic base while at USC before coming to Seattle.
Schneider, 45, is the former personnel assistant for his hometown Green Bay Packers. He has collaborated with Carroll on the Seahawks since 2010. Their run has included Seattle’s first Super Bowl championship following the 2013 season, another Super Bowl appearance the next year and playoff games in five of their six years in charge.
The deal Carroll signed in April 2014 is believed to be worth about $9 million per year. His extension, likely to be through 2021 to mirror Schneider’s, could end up above $10 million annually, putting Carroll near New England’s Bill Belichick, the NFL’s highest-paid coach.
Expect the Seahawks to announce an extension for Carroll soon, perhaps around the start of training camp Saturday or during the upcoming preseason.
One of Schneider’s first acts since agreeing to his new contract was reportedly meeting with the agent for Pro Bowl defensive end Michael Bennett. ESPN.com’s Josina Anderson reported agent Doug Hendrickson was to talk early this week with the Seahawks. The agent for retired Seattle running back Marshawn Lynch became Bennett’s representative this offseason.
Bennett has for the past year proclaimed to anyone with ears he is unhappy with the contract he signed before the 2014 season. That four-year deal worth $28.5 million has two years remaining. It is scheduled to pay him $4 million in base pay this year. He signed it just before the market at his position jumped past him, as happens in a rich league where the salary cap has been increasing by double-digit percentages for years.
Bennett is coming off a 2015 season in which he had a career-best 10 sacks and made his first Pro Bowl. Yet he is the league’s 27th-highest-paid defensive end.
The timing of his agent meeting with the Seahawks suggests the possibility of a hold out when Bennett is due to report to camp Friday. But Bennett vowed last month he will report on time. Bennett reported on time last summer then played in every game, often with a badly sprained toe that eventually required a pain-management injection before the playoffs.
Safety Kam Chancellor held out for 54 days last season, from the beginning of the Seahawks’ 2015 training camp through the regular season’s first two games. Seattle lost both. Chancellor returned after being subject to fines of more than $2 million, with nothing gained other than animosity. Schneider stuck to his stated principle of not renegotiating contracts with multiple years left on them.
Chancellor wrote on Twitter last weekend what a mistake that holdout was.
“Don’t strive to be rich with Money, strive to be rich in Faith and your Heart!! Be a Great Role Model. we can all do that!!” Chancellor posted Sunday, “souls get lost sometimes until you remember why you do it … learn from me.”
NFL players know once they reach 30 the window on their earning potential threatens to slam on them like a guillotine. Bennett turns 31 in November. That’s why he wants his money now. Carroll has said he doesn’t disagree with Bennett’s stance and that he wants Bennett to remain a Seahawk. Bennett is scheduled for a non-guaranteed 2017 base salary of $6 million, and roster bonuses of $1 million this year and $1.5 million next year. Those bonuses are based on the number of games he plays the next two seasons.
Schneider’s first act since his extension may be to reward Bennett’s good soldiering. It may be to agree with Hendrickson to move some, most or all of that $8.5 million in future money into upfront guarantees, as the Seahawks did for Lynch to end his one-week holdout of training camp in 2014. For the GM, it’s technically not renegotiating a contract with multiple years remaining.
