Pete Carroll said Seahawks had no intention to trade Russell Wilson. Here’s why they did
Pete Carroll said it weeks ago at the league scouting combine.
He said it last week in a extraordinary, explanatory press conference at team headquarters in Renton.
And he said it again Tuesday on the radio in Seattle.
He did not want to, had zero intention of, trading Russell Wilson.
“There was just so much compelling reasoning why he would stay, because of all the history and all the time spent,” the Seahawks coach said on KIRO-AM Tuesday morning. “That was exactly where I was coming from, just to use the logic of it. When you’ve built a relationship over a long period of time, there’s great benefits to that moving forward, and well beyond your career and stuff. Those are all parts of the conversation.
“What I continue to say: I had no intention, at all, of making a move while guys were under contract. And we were pleased with what was going on, and all.
“So I fought for the logic of that for a good while, until it wasn’t meaningful anymore to stick with that.”
Ultimately, it became meaningless for Carroll to appeal to Wilson’s sentimentality, to remind the 33-year-old quarterback that Carroll drafted him in 2012 after he’d been ignored for almost three full rounds of that draft. Carroll made him Seattle’s starter from his rookie preseason through the franchise’s only Super Bowl title and best 10 years in Seahawks history.
All that became meaningless to Carroll between the end of this past season Jan. 9 and the start of the combine in Indianapolis March 1.
In that span, Wilson decided he could not and would not fulfill his personal “legacy” he talked about increasingly over the last year — his goal to win three more Super Bowls and play until he’s at least 45 — in Seattle.
Why Wilson wanted out
Wilson saw Carroll’s increasing moves toward a less-Wilson-centric offensive system, to a return to running the ball first and most that won Seattle a Super Bowl with Marshawn Lynch in the 2013 season.
Carroll firing Wilson’s friend Brian Schottenheimer as Seattle’s offensive coordinator and play caller in January 2021 accelerated Wilson’s disenchantment. Months earlier, Schottenheimer had finally “let Russ cook.” Wilson was throwing the ball all over the NFL. He was on pace for league scoring and passing records to begin the 2020 season.
Then came Seattle’s track-meet, blowout loss at Buffalo in early November 2020. Wilson committed four turnovers. On the long flight back to Seattle that night, Carroll decided he’d seen enough of Wilson passing. He rededicated the offense to running more. It didn’t happen overnight, but Schottenheimer was gone two months later.
Wilson did not support that move, in particular.
“No. You ask me am I in favor of it? No,” Wilson said two days after the Seahawks fired Schottenheimer.
A couple weeks later, Wilson told Seattle reporters, “I’m frustrated with getting hit too much.”
This past season Wilson missed his first games due to injury of his career. Then he admitted he rushed back too soon from a broken finger, in half the time his surgeon said he’d miss. The Seahawks went 1-2 in the games he missed and 0-3 in his first starts back. They missed the playoffs for the second time in 10 years.
Running back Rashaad Penny romped through December into January in his four best rushing games of his career to end the 2021 season. The Seahawks won four of the final six games of a 7-10 season. That reinforced to Carroll the need to run more. That meant Wilson throwing the ball less.
Wilson also saw the contract of his best offensive lineman, 35-year-old Duane Brown, was ending. So was the contract of starting right tackle Brandon Shell. He knew center had basically become a revolving door of seven starters in Seattle since the team traded Pro Bowl snapper Max Unger to New Orleans for tight end Jimmy Graham (a weapon for Wilson, not the run game). That was in 2015. Since then, the Seahawks had not invested much in the offensive line’s anchor position crucial to any quarterback.
In early February, Carroll fired veteran and well-liked line coach Mike Solari. Carroll doubled down on recommitting to more zone-read running game for his offense by promoting Andy Dickerson to replace Solari. Dickerson came to Seattle the year before with new, first-time play caller Shane Waldron, Schottenheimer’s replacement.
Wilson had seen enough.
Despite saying publicly Jan. 6 his “plan” was to win more Super Bowls “here” in Seattle, Wilson soon convinced Carroll and general manager John Schneider he would not re-sign with the Seahawks for a third time when his $140 million contract expires following the 2023 season.
The price for Wilson to stay reached at least $50 million per year this month when Aaron Rodgers re-signed with Green Bay at that mark. Rodgers’ deals are what Wilson’s agent Mark Rodgers had used as comps for Wilson’s Seahawks contracts. The agent’s reasoning: Each have won one Super Bowl; Wilson is the winningest quarterback in NFL history through the first 10 seasons of a career; and Wilson is five years younger than the Packers quarterback.
“We were under the impression” Wilson would leave after 2023, Schneider said last week.
That, above all else, is why the Seahawks decided to trade Wilson to the Denver Broncos for three players and five draft choices, two of them first-rounders.
Carroll said Tuesday afternoon on 93.3 KJR radio the Seahawks “would have gone through it to the end” considering making Wilson the highest-paid NFL player ever — for the third time — this time time next year. But again, the Seahawks “were under the impression” Wilson had decided he wasn’t re-signing again with Seattle.
Two league sources told The News Tribune multiple times in the last week, including Tuesday night, the two sides did not talk “ever once” about an extension for Wilson in Seattle beyond 2023, as part of this trade or anytime.
So it remains inconclusive exactly where and how Schneider got that “impression” Wilson wouldn’t re-sign with Seattle beyond next year.
“It was just headed in that direction,” a league source with direct knowledge of the situation told The News Tribune.
“There were irreconcilable differences.”
The no-trade clause
Ultimately, the bold stroke that got Wilson out of Seattle and to the only place he wanted to go was the last item his agent negotiated with the Seahawks in 2019.
That April, Mark Rodgers set a deadline of the first day of official offseason workouts for Wilson to have a new contract. Rodgers asked for an unprecedented escalator clause to tie Wilson’s future salaries through 2023 to annual increases in the NFL salary cap.
Schneider said no way. He didn’t want to set that costly precedent for which fellow GMs around the league never would have forgiven him.
Rodgers then told the Seahawks he wanted a promise they wouldn’t place a franchise tag on Wilson at the end of his contract that would prevent him from leaving in free agency. Schneider emphatically said no to that. The Seahawks were already going to be paying him what at the time was the richest deal in NFL history, above Aaron Rodgers. Schneider didn’t want to lose all leverage in the next contract talks with Wilson by forfeiting Seattle’s right to retain him with a franchise tag if new contract talks failed.
Schneider and Mark Rodgers agreed on the salaries and on roster bonuses that added $10 million and guarantees in 2019. The rich extension was all but done.
Then the agent made a last request: a no-trade clause. It was the last item Seattle had to give Wilson to get the deal done on April 15, 2019. Without the no-trade clause, there would be no deal.
Up to then, Schneider had not done a no-trade clause in his nine years as the Seahawks’ GM. Yet so close to securing a contract for his franchise QB past his 35th birthday, Schneider reluctantly gave it to Rodgers and Wilson.
It was the last piece that got Wilson signed to a $140 million deal with a $65 million signing bonus just after midnight into April 16, 2019.
It is the reason Wilson is now in Denver.
Over the last 13 months, knowing his client was becoming increasingly frustrated and unhappy with the Seahawks’ direction, his agent effectively created a market for Wilson across the league that did not exist.
Wilson’s comments about being frustrated with getting hit too much in February 2021 led to curious teams calling the Seahawks to see if Wilson might be available in a trade. Schneider told them Wilson wasn’t available.
Seeing that teams were calling the Seahawks, Rodgers called Schneider one evening last offseason. The agent told the GM there were four teams (with offensive directions the QB liked) Wilson would be willing to waive his no-trade clause for, if the Seahawks found an offer they liked and were willing to deal.
Schneider told Rodgers to forget it, the Seahawks weren’t trading Wilson. A league source told the TNT the GM’s wasn’t a profane dismissal but it was flippant.
Rebuffed, Rodgers went to ESPN on Feb. 25, 2021. The agent gave NFL reporter Adam Schefter four teams Wilson would be willing to waive his no-trade clause to go to if the Seahawks wanted to trade him, which they didn’t: the Cowboys, Saints, Raiders and Bears.
A year ago, those teams had the offensive direction Wilson liked. But since then, QB guru Sean Payton retired as the Saints’ coach. The Raiders fired coach Jon Gruden and GM Mike Mayock. The Bears fired offensive-minded head coach Matt Nagy and GM Ryan Pace. The Cowboys re-signed quarterback Dak Prescott to a four-year, $160 million contract.
Yet Rodgers’ four-teams salvo had the desired effect. More teams began calling the Seahawks to see if Wilson was available. A market that hadn’t existed now did.
His no-trade clause meant Wilson had the freedom to choose of a free agent, but with the financial security of an existing contract. When Wilson made up his mind this winter his legacy would best be fulfilled somewhere other than Seattle, he alone picked where to go. When floundering teams with what Wilson saw as less-creative offenses such as Washington offered the Seahawks three first-round picks for their quarterback, Seattle couldn’t even entertain that offer. Wilson refused to be traded to Washington.
Except for Denver, the Seahawks were talking to teams that Wilson wasn’t going to go to. Schneider and Carroll knew it. That’s why they were carefully parsing their words when they said at the combine this month the Seahawks were “not shopping” Wilson.
Technically, they weren’t. Wilson was shopping himself — and only to the Broncos.
“He was looking,” Carroll said Tuesday on KJR. “He wanted to know what his opportunities were, too.”
Why Denver
In Denver Wilson saw a GM, Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway, who would be willing to give Wilson the $50 million a year he’ll be seeking this time next year. Elway wants to end the six-QB carousel the middling Broncos have had since Peyton Manning retired in Denver.
Wilson also liked what he saw in new Broncos head coach Nathaniel Hackett. Hackett is just 42. He was Rodgers’ quarterback-friendly play caller in Green Bay from 2019-21. Rodgers won two league MVP awards with Hackett as his offensive coordinator.
Schneider and Broncos GM George Paton have known each other since the 1990s, when they were introduced by Mark Hatley. Hatley preceded Schneider in Kansas City as the Chiefs’ director of pro personnel; Schneider had that job from 1997-99. Hatley was a top executive with Chicago and Paton a scout for the Bears those years.
A league source confirmed to the TNT what Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated reported last week: At the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama, the final week of January, Schneider and Paton met at the Battle House hotel. Schneider told Paton that Wilson had Denver as one of what a second league source told the TNT was three teams Wilson would waive his no-trade clause and approve a deal to. The Broncos were Wilson’s top choice. The other teams were unspecified.
Schneider and Paton continued talking, secretly even to their own staffs beyond their head coaches. A dozen teams were calling the Seahawks asking about Wilson. But the Broncos had 11 picks in this year’s draft. That was the result of Denver trading star pass rusher Von Miller to the Rams during last season and other deals.
At the combine beginning March 1, Schneider and Paton met away from the usual hangouts of NFL personnel at Indianapolis. They met in hotel rooms. They met at an off-the-beaten-path bar. And, yes, Schneider scribbled down the Seahawks’ final offer to deal Wilson on the back of a parking valet ticket from the JW Marriott hotel in Indianapolis and handed it to Paton, as SI reported. Schneider wrote Seattle demanded a first- and a second-round pick this year, plus a first- and a second-round pick next year, plus players.
The Broncos agreed to the two first-round picks, the two second-round choices and to send unproven, benched quarterback in Drew Lock, tight end Noah Fant and defensive tackle Shelby Harris to Seattle.
Schneider accepted. Wilson signed his no-trade clause waiver.
And last week, Wilson was wearing a sharp suit and a Broncos-orange tie standing next to his wife Ciara and his agent Rodgers and saying: “I came here for one reason: I came here to win. Broncos Country, let’s ride!”
Yes, the Seahawks could have gotten more in return from another team. They could have gotten a more proven, veteran passer than Lock in the trade to replace Wilson.
But the Seahawks could not wait for a better deal. Wilson wouldn’t approve it. He would only approve this one, to Denver.
Basically — and as tough as it may be for Seahawks fans to know — Wilson didn’t love his job playing in Seattle anymore. So he sought another job of his choosing. It was in Denver.
“And,” a league source told the TNT of the Seahawks, “if they didn’t want to trade him they wouldn’t have traded him.
“It was both sides.”
This story was originally published March 22, 2022 at 1:15 PM with the headline "Pete Carroll said Seahawks had no intention to trade Russell Wilson. Here’s why they did."
