Let me introduce this with an important preface. I do not think the Seahawks will trade Russell Wilson. I do not think they should trade Russell Wilson. Priority No. 1 for the team should be winning games. Priority No. 2 should be keeping its star quarterback around for as long as possible, because that gives the team the best chance of fulfilling Priority No. 1.
I don't think the relationship between Wilson and the Seahawks has soured to the same extent that Deshaun Watson's has with the Texans or Carson Wentz's did with the Eagles, but if it came down to picking between the two, I'd choose Wilson over Pete Carroll in about two seconds. It's typically much harder to find a quarterback like Wilson than it is to find a coach like Carroll, which is why teams pay veteran quarterbacks three to four times as much as they do head coaches. If you're upset at the idea of quarterbacks using their power to build organizations in their image, think about what happened when Chip Kelly and Bill O'Brien took over personnel control. (If you think this is a worrying new trend, look up what John Elway and Eli Manning did when they came out of college.)
My suspicion is that the smoke surrounding the Wilson situation is meaningful and yet simultaneously not likely to produce a fire. If he really wanted to move on from Seattle, he would follow in the footsteps of Watson and tell the Seahawks that he has no intention of wearing their uniform again. Until that happens, the chances of a Wilson trade are minute.
Wilson probably does want to get hit less frequently and does want the Seahawks to invest more in their offensive line, where they rank 30th in cap expenditure heading into 2021 after an average mark of 22nd over the prior six seasons. The last time Seattle ranked in the top 15 in cap expenditure up front was 2014, which was also the last time it made it to the Super Bowl. Wilson's critics would rightly note that the quarterback's style likely lends itself to more hits and the best way to avoid those hits would be to run the ball more, which seems to call for a return to the offensive style Carroll prefers. Relationships are complicated, and this one is no different.
Nobody likes preparing for the worst, and it would be a crushing blow for the Seahawks if they traded away Wilson. What I'm here to do today is try to build a coherent plan for what to do if things go wrong and they actually do end up shipping off their quarterback. The only reason to trade him would be if they think they can make their organization better in the process.
Let's figure out a way to make that happen and piece together what a few plausible Wilson trade offers could look like:
Jump straight to the trade offers
The rules for trading Russell Wilson
1. Get him as far away from Seattle as possible. This seems simple enough. The Seahawks will want to face Wilson as infrequently as they can, which means he's not heading to the 49ers. Preferably, the Seahawks would send Wilson to the AFC, where they would likely need to play him only once every four years. They also probably don't want to play him at home this year as fans return, which would rule out a pair of teams on his reported list of viable trade partners, the Bears and Saints.
Wilson has a no-trade clause, so he'll be able to rule out possible destinations if so inclined. It would like take something truly special for the Seahawks to ship Wilson somewhere within the NFC.
2. They need to have a quarterback plan after making the Wilson trade. In some situations, a team could trade away a franchise quarterback without having to worry about his immediate replacement. A rebuilding team doesn't need to worry about finding above-average play under center for a couple of years. If the Chiefs somehow ended up parting ways with Patrick Mahomes, I would have some faith that Andy Reid could either find a useful quarterback or manufacture competent play out of somebody. (Thankfully for Chiefs fans, this isn't happening for another decade or so.)
The Seahawks don't fit either of those archetypes. They came into 2020 as the eighth-oldest team in football and traded two first-round picks for safety Jamal Adams, suggesting that the organization sees its window to win as right now.
Furthermore, the track record of general manager John Schneider's regime before landing on Wilson suggests that the Seahawks would struggle to find a replacement for their starter. Wilson was famously a third-round pick owing to his height, but the Seahawks struggled to identify viable quarterbacks before taking a shot on the former minor league baseball player.
Carroll and Schneider inherited a 35-year-old Matt Hasselbeck in 2010 and immediately made a move to target a replacement by sending a third-round pick and a 20-pick swap in the second round to the Chargers for Charlie Whitehurst, who had never thrown an NFL pass. "When you see something like this available," Schneider said at the time, "you have to take your shot." The 6-foot-4 Whitehurst posted a 64.6 passer rating over 155 career pass attempts with the Seahawks.
After Whitehurst failed to impress in his first year with the team, the Seahawks let Hasselbeck leave in free agency and signed Tarvaris Jackson to a two-year deal. The organization also reportedly considered former Carroll charge Matt Leinart, who ended up signing elsewhere. Jackson posted a 79.2 passer rating in his lone year as the starter, although he stuck around Seattle for several years as a backup.
The big move came the following offseason. Matt Flynn had started twice in four years in Green Bay behind Aaron Rodgers, but those starts were impressive. He had gone 24-of-37 for 251 yards with three touchdowns and a pick in a narrow prime-time loss to the Patriots in 2010. The following year, Flynn posted a stunning performance in Week 17, going 31-of-44 for 480 yards with six touchdowns and an interception in a victory over the Lions. Schneider, who had previously been with the Packers, was impressed enough to sign Flynn to a three-year, $26 million deal with $10 million guaranteed.
You know what happened next. Flynn lost a training-camp competition to Wilson and threw only nine passes for the Seahawks. The team sent Flynn to the Raiders for a pair of midround picks, and he started one game with Oakland before getting benched and finishing his career with the Packers. Flynn might have been a viable quarterback, but he didn't end up doing much for the Seahawks, and he wasn't anything like the guy from those two starts for Green Bay.
In the big picture, you could argue that Schneider and Carroll's method of taking low-stakes shots on the position worked, given that they eventually ended up with Wilson. It took two years and three other signings before the Seahawks eventually landed on a franchise quarterback in the third round, where the success rate in finding starting quarterbacks isn't very high. That method was fine back in 2010, when Schneider and Carroll inherited a 5-11 team and were rebuilding the roster.
Right now, though, the Seahawks can't afford to throw away two years to take some low-risk shots on quarterbacks. In addition to having one of the older rosters in football, Carroll turns 70 in September. The Seahawks can't just trade Wilson for a bunch of picks in the middle of the first round without a clear path to a starting quarterback, either via a high draft pick or as part of the return in the trade.
3. They can't ask for (much) less than the Texans will get for Watson. The Seahawks seem likely to consider a Wilson move before the Texans eventually throw in the towel and deal Watson, with the latter move possibly not coming until 2022. They probably won't have the terms of the Watson deal to work off, but if the Texans are going to get four first-round picks for their quarterback, Seattle has to get something close for Wilson.
Is that unrealistic? No, but let's evaluate the two. Watson is nearly 7 years younger than Wilson. That's a huge advantage in his favor. At 25, Watson could be in the league for 12-plus more years. It's difficult to see the 32-year-old Wilson lasting that long. Their performances have been roughly comparable; Watson has a 69.7 QBR over his first four seasons in the league, while Wilson has a 67.6 mark since entering the league in 2012.
On the other hand, Wilson's deal is friendlier than Watson's. Both quarterbacks would be on below-market contracts if they get traded, but Watson has five years and $146.5 million remaining, for an average of $29.3 million per season. Wilson, on the other hand, has three years and $70 million left on his pact, for an average of just $23.3 million per year. Every little bit helps.
The most important distinction in Wilson's favor, though, is health. The only concerning thing on Watson's résumé is his injury history, as he's torn his ACL twice. Watson has missed only a meaningless Week 17 game over the past three years, but he famously needed to take a bus to Jacksonville to play a game against the Jaguars out of fear that the air pressure from a plane would aggravate his rib and lung injuries. Watson has been hit on 19.9% of his dropbacks since entering the league, the fourth-highest rate in football.
Wilson is not far behind at 18.3% over that time frame, but he has been as healthy as anybody in football. He has never missed a game because of an injury, and only once has he missed meaningful snaps because of an injury, when Trevone Boykin threw a handful of passes against the 49ers in 2016. Wilson suffered a minor knee injury on that day and dealt with a Ndamukong Suh-instigated ankle injury that season, but despite that hit rate, he almost never gets hurt. His instincts for avoiding dangerous hits and knowing when and where to scramble safely have been apparent for a long time now. Watson will be around longer, but Wilson is more likely to play 85 games over the next five years.
With that in mind, the Seahawks need to start any trade discussions for Wilson by asking for four first-round picks. Other deals might include players -- and they might be willing to settle for a little less than the Texans when all is said and done -- but I don't think even three first-rounders would be enough to trade Wilson. More realistic would be at least two first-rounders and players heading back Seattle's way.
4. Avoid taking on big money. The Seahawks would be in rough cap shape as a result of a Wilson trade, as his $32 million cap charge would turn into an NFL-record $39 million in dead money for the 2021 season. As a result, they probably can't take on significant money on their cap as part of any Wilson deal. That would rule out somebody like Derek Carr coming back in the deal.
5. Commit to your philosophy. One of the most puzzling and frustrating struggles in the league is in Minnesota. Vikings coach Mike Zimmer has publicly insisted that his team's focus is on running the football, even to the extent of firing offensive coordinator John DeFilippo. At the same time, the Vikings have had a pair of star receivers on their roster in Adam Thielen and either Stefon Diggs or Justin Jefferson. More notably, they've spent $84 million on Kirk Cousins over the past three years and will pay the veteran $64 million more between 2022 and 2023.
If a team wants to build around its running game, that's fine. Doing that and paying a quarterback $148 million over five years just seems counterintuitive. If the Seahawks decide to trade Wilson, they probably need to work back toward the run-first philosophy Carroll has espoused over the majority of his time in Seattle. That probably means spending less at quarterback and devoting more toward the running game. The offensive line seems like an obvious place to target, but the Seahawks could also conceivably look toward a running back, given that Chris Carson is a free agent and Rashaad Penny missed most of 2020.
The other philosophical argument you could make is that the Seahawks need to start winning games with their defense again. Their defense helped carry them to victories in the second half of 2020, but it finished the season 16th in defensive DVOA. The Seahawks haven't ranked in the top 10 in defensive DVOA since 2016. They dealt two first-round picks last summer to acquire Adams, but they could also use some of the haul from a Wilson trade to try to build a top-five defense again.
Four potential Wilson trade offers
We can't satisfy all of those concerns in a Wilson trade, but we can try to get as much as possible. Wilson has a no-trade clause, which will force the Seahawks to deal him to a place where he's comfortable, but I don't think the four-team list he sent them makes much sense.
The Saints can't afford Wilson. The Cowboys just locked up Dak Prescott. The Bears don't have the cap space or the offensive line to make a logical deal. I'll suggest a swap with the fourth team on that list -- the Raiders -- as one of my suggestions below.
Let's work through what some plausible Wilson deals might look like and why each could make sense.
Offer No. 1
Seahawks get: QB Tua Tagovailoa, Nos. 18 and 81 overall picks in 2021, 2022 first-round pick
Dolphins get: QB Russell Wilson
This is the quickest way for the Seahawks to retool while remaining a championship-caliber team. Tagovailoa struggled as a rookie, but he was regarded as a top prospect for the entirety of his time at Alabama, and the Seahawks would be getting him on the cheap. He is owed only $10.1 million over the next three years, giving Seattle plenty of spending room to work with as it builds around him. It would also add two first-round picks and a third-rounder over the next two years, allowing the franchise to get back some of the selections it shed in the Adams trade.
Brian Flores' team would become an immediate Super Bowl contender by adding Wilson. The star passer might have concerns about Miami's offensive line, which is why the Dolphins would need to insist on keeping the No. 3 overall pick in April's draft. Using that pick on Oregon's Penei Sewell would give the Dolphins a pair of first-round tackles in Sewell and Austin Jackson. Add one of the many receivers available in this year's free-agent class and the Dolphins suddenly look like a scary offense.
Offer No. 2
Seahawks get: QB Marcus Mariota, TE Darren Waller, No. 17 overall pick in 2021, 2022 first-round pick (from Raiders); DE Chase Winovich, 2022 third-round pick (from Patriots)
Raiders get: QB Russell Wilson, 2022 sixth-round pick (from Seahawks)
Patriots get: QB Derek Carr (from Raiders)
This is a bombshell deal, with four picks and three different quarterbacks on the move to three teams. Let's unpack it team by team. The Patriots are sending away a third-round pick along with Winovich, who tied for the league lead in hurries but never seems to be on Bill Belichick's good side. In return, they get a high-floor quarterback in Carr, who pushes the Patriots back into immediate playoff contention in the AFC. Carr has two years and $39.5 million left to go on his contract.
The Raiders are sending out both of their quarterbacks, two first-round picks and a star tight end in Waller. In return, they're getting Wilson and a sixth-round pick. I could see how Raiders fans might think that was too much, but I could also see how Seahawks fans would think that wasn't enough. When you have that combination, you typically have something close to a fair deal.
Weirdly, Raiders general manager Mike Mayock and coach Jon Gruden have torn apart the offensive line that might have interested Wilson a couple of weeks ago by cutting both starting guards and trading away Trent Brown, but they would get a notable upgrade from Carr and the best quarterback Gruden has been able to work with. (He technically had Brett Favre in Green Bay, but that was as a wide receivers coach.) They won't have trouble selling tickets in Las Vegas, but Wilson gives the Raiders a cornerstone as they try to win a playoff game for the first time since 2002.
This would be a buy-in-bulk return for Wilson for the Seahawks, but they address several spots on their roster. They unquestionably downgrade at quarterback, but Mariota looked good in his lone appearance coming off the bench for Vegas last season and is due $10.6 million this year. Maybe he flourishes with a return to the Pacific Northwest in a more run-heavy attack.
Seattle also finally gets the star tight end it has craved for years in Waller, whose contract is an absolute steal; the 28-year-old makes less than $20 million over the next three years. Winovich gives the Seahawks a low-cost, high-upside option on the edge after cutting Carlos Dunlap, and Seattle gets the two first-round picks it lost in the Adams deal back from Las Vegas to go with a third-rounder from New England. There are major questions at quarterback after this trade, but the Seahawks pick up just about everything they would want elsewhere in a Wilson swap.
Offer No. 3
Seahawks get: Edge Brian Burns, QB Teddy Bridgewater, No. 8 overall pick in 2021, 2022 first-round pick, 2023 first-round pick
Panthers get: QB Russell Wilson, 2023 second-round pick
The Panthers would probably have to pay a premium to keep Wilson in the NFC, and this is a mammoth offer. The least notable player coming back to the Seahawks might actually be Bridgewater, who has a $22.9 million cap hit in 2021. The Seahawks could convert $15 million of Bridgewater's $17 million base salary into a signing bonus and add three voidable years to the end of his deal, which would eventually produce a 2021 cap hit below $6 million. They could also ask the Panthers to convert some of Bridgewater's salary into a bonus to drive down his price, but he is the right sort of quarterback for the Seahawks to covet if they want to run the ball and avoid giveaways on offense.
The Seahawks get three first-round picks in this deal and a potential star pass-rusher in Burns, who had nine sacks and 23 knockdowns in his second pro season. He is due a little more than $4 million over the next two years at Seattle's biggest position of need. If the Seahawks are going to win games with their defense, they need somebody like Burns to threaten opposing quarterbacks.
Carolina would suddenly have a scary passing attack with Wilson, DJ Moore, Robby Anderson and Christian McCaffrey, although the line is a question mark with free agent Russell Okung leaving. The NFC South might be up for grabs after 2021, and the Panthers could suddenly be equipped to contend with Wilson at quarterback. The move also brings Wilson back to North Carolina, where he started his college career at NC State.
Offer No. 4
Seahawks get: QB Sam Darnold (from Jets); edge Bradley Chubb, No. 9 overall pick in 2021, 2022 first-round pick (from Broncos)
Broncos get: QB Russell Wilson, 2022 third-round pick (from Seahawks); 2022 fourth-round pick (from Bears)
Jets get: WR Tim Patrick, 2023 fourth-round pick (from Broncos); 2023 third-round pick (conditional, from Seahawks)
Bears get: QB Drew Lock (from Broncos)
Let's finish up with a four-way trade. Denver exec John Elway's predilection for tall quarterbacks is old hat by now, but you have to think he would be willing to make an exception for Wilson. The Broncos would have to give up one of their best young defenders in Chubb, but this move unlocks what could be one of the NFL's great offenses given its depth at receiver and quietly impressive offensive line. After five years in the wilderness, the Broncos would suddenly be playoff contenders overnight.
With Chubb, the Seahawks get the star edge rusher they've sorely missed since Cliff Avril and Michael Bennett left. The former fifth overall pick had 7.5 sacks and 19 knockdowns after returning from a torn ACL last season. They also get the No. 9 pick in April's draft -- which could go toward help along the offensive line or at cornerback -- and a 2022 first-rounder.
By mixing in the Jets, Seattle also takes a shot on its quarterback of the future in Darnold, who is owed about $4.7 million in 2021 before his fifth-year option spikes in 2022. The Seahawks would probably need to negotiate an out to avoid fully guaranteeing that option as part of this deal, but Darnold would presumably be in position to rebuild his career with a pair of great receivers in Seattle, which could make such an arrangement agreeable.
Jets fans might not be thrilled with this return for Darnold, but New York's leverage is only going to decrease as we get closer to the draft. If it plans to take a quarterback with the No. 2 pick, it won't have much use for Darnold. This is a reasonable return. Patrick, a restricted free agent, averaged 9.4 yards per target a year ago and has the size to impress as a starting wideout if given the opportunity. The Jets would get a fourth-round pick from the Broncos and a conditional third-rounder from the Seahawks if Darnold takes a snap in a playoff game for Seattle in 2021 or 2022.
The Bears, meanwhile, sneak in to get some competition for Nick Foles. Missing out on Wilson will hurt, but they realistically need to try to find a cheaper quarterback solution as they win games with their defense. Lock's athleticism might appeal to the same organization that once placed Mitchell Trubisky on a pedestal, and he's due $2.6 million over the next two seasons.