Anyone that thinks Hutchinson wasn't in on this contract language is in La La Land. He's no dummy he's a U of M Grad. (That's NOT Miami!) I can picture Jones bragging to Hutch about his big contract and being the highest paid lineman. Now Hutch and the Vikes turn the tables on a Seahawk team that didn't take care of business. The sweet thing is not only will he be higher paid than Jones in 2006, all his money would be guaranteed! That Michigan education paid off bigtime! LOL! HAIL TO THE VICTOR!!!!
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (TheBeef)</div><div class='quotemain'>Minnesota makes Troy Williamson its transition player....a team signs him to a decent deal, but the contract stipulates that unless hes the only WR from the Universisty of South Carolina on your team, he gets a $20 million dollar bonus....now the signing team has no WRs from SC so they dont care, but you have Marcus Robinson so you would have to cough up the bonus....so you decide you would rather have Williamson and you release a player you dont want to release in Robinson, and match the deal.....then the other team argues that at the time Williamson signed the offer sheet, you did have another WR from South Carolina, so you couldnt meet the conditions stated and you do owe the $20 million....is that a fair stipulation? Give me an honest answer, I dare you!</div> The example is not parallel enough to comment on. Being the highest paid lineman also puts him in a position of a leader - being from South Carolina just makes you from South Carolina. There are other intangibles that being the highest paid lineman for 2006 bring in that would encourage him to sign. Do I think it was a dirty move? I think it was sneaky on the part of the Vikings. I also think it was sneaky on the part of the Seahawks to restructure Jone's contract to wiggle their way out of the mess they got into by just using the transition tag. The fact is, Seattle has already invested a lot into their offensive line. The fact is, they cannot invest that much more. The fact is, the Vikings recognized this, recognized that they did not hold onto Hutch as strongly as they should have, and made Seattle pay for their mistake. Is it a dirty move? No - it would have been dirty if the Vikings somehow kept it out of arbitration. A judge ruled on it, and now teams know that a transition tag gives no assurances that they are going to keep their players.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (BearsFan1)</div><div class='quotemain'>I think it is sweet that MN has overpaid this much for a GAURD!!! It is hilarious, he is good, dont get me wrong, but obviously about the money, i expect a small to medium dropoff in production, meaning he wont be worth it</div> That's very possible. If he doesn't live up to expectations, I can tell you the Minnesota faithful will be enraged - especially when big name FA's like Peterson, Witherspoon, or Arrington are on the market and the Vikings are busy spending their time buying the most expensive offensive lineman on the market. On the otherhand, if Hutch is even halfway decent, then the offensive line is looking phenomonal. They need to shore up the right side a little, but with McKinnie, Birk, and Hutchinson, that left side is going to beat up a few defensive linemen.
Steve Hutchinson is the best Guard in the NFL. Living in Seattle the story I've heard is the Seahawks offered Hutchinson a deal worth about 5.8 million a year (not sure on the # of years) before Free Agency started. He thought he was worth a lot more so the Hawks told him that they'ed Transition him and asked him to let them know before he signed any offer sheets. And Hutchinson signed the deal with the Vikings with out calling the Hawks first. This is at least the Seahawks version coming out of the back channels in Seattle. The ruling by the Arbitrator pretty much ends the use of the Transition tag. The Transition tag was designed to allow a team to match the same contract, but the deal Minnesota signed him to and the deal Seattle would have had to sign him too were not the same and Seattle wasn't allowed to shift money around to make it the same. Teams can no longer Transition players. So Long Hutch, Hello Julian Peterson.
Seattle wasn't going to 'match' the offer - they were going to shift around numbers so that it matched the offer on paper. The way this contract was setup was to guarantee that Hutch would get the most money possible without Seattle coming in and restructuring stuff in a way that would give him less money.
