In the days leading up to the Super Bowl, Seahawks coach Pete Carroll was talking about keeping his team’s nucleus intact, and the first name he mentioned when rattling off a list of players was running back Marshawn Lynch.
It appears naming Lynch first wasn’t coincidental, and that the Seahawks are serious about keeping their star running back beyond this season, because according to NFL.com, Seattle has offered Lynch a “huge contract extension” that would pay him more than $10 million in 2015.
Other details of the contract aren’t given in the report, the number of years included, so there’s no way of knowing what kind of cap ramifications the deal would have, but assuming it contains multiple years, or if much of that $10 million is in the form of a signing bonus—bonuses are prorated over the life of the contract for salary cap purposes—the Seahawks could have to deal with future cap ramifications considering Lynch’s age.
But according to the report from Ian Rapoport, the Seahawks are willing to spend big on an aging back because he “has outplayed his contract,” and “they want to reward him for his work.”
Lynch’s current contract runs through the 2015 season, paying Lynch $5 million in base salary, plus a $2 million roster bonus for next season, with another $500,000 possible in performance-based bonuses.
Lynch getting a big raise for his 29-year-old season is rather dramatic change from last summer and even the middle part of the season, when the assumption was that the Seahawks might balk at paying a back Lynch’s age what was left on his contract, let alone give him a raise. There were also reports midseason of the Seahawks being fed up with Lynch’s behavior, but those have always been strongly refuted by Carroll and general manager John Schneider. But whether there were issues or not, and regardless of the fact that Lynch is nearing the age where running backs tend to see their production decline, it’s impossible to deny that he was massively important to Seattle’s offense this season, having arguably his best season at an age when it was reasonable to wonder if he might start slowing down, rushing for 1,306 yards and a career-high 13 touchdowns, while also establishing a career high with 367 receiving yards and four receiving touchdowns.
“He means everything to this offense,” receiver Doug Baldwin said Wednesday. “I don’t know where we would be without Marshawn Lynch. He is the engine. He is the heart and soul of this offense. Everything runs through him. Despite what everyone wants to think, Marshawn Lynch is this offense.”
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