I want to see the real numbers, because agents have a tendency to completely overhype and inflate numbers in order to make themselves look great. It's like the "monster" contract Colin Kaepernick signed, which turned out to be not so monster after all.
But let's just pretend that Wilson ends up the third highest paid QB in the NFL. I hate to say it, but I don't think he's that good. Granted, I agree with Foxxy and think athletes are generally overpaid to begin with (not that the owners should just keep all the money), and Eli Manning is going to be way more overpaid than Russell, but if I created a list of the top 10 QBs for 2015, I'd probably put him on there. But not 3rd. Even if I try to use a crystal ball and look to, say the 2018 season, I'm still not sure he'll be the third best then. In fact, with a balloon contract the team is going to not be able to spread the wealth and sign other key players. He'll slowly lose them around him, and struggle. Probably back to about 10th best QB overall.
I don't know the team has a lot of room to push him though. Look at it this way. They can pay him a cheap $1.5 mil this year, and run the risk that he's unhappy and under performs. Then what? They franchise tag him? An arbiter will rule to pay him close to $20m anyway. Then they lose him and hope they can draft someone to replace him? That's the risk. Or do they hope he plays more poorly this year, so they can pay him less next year? That won't work either. They're kind of stuck paying him at least something, try to get it incentive laden, and try, hope, ask, in the future he'll restructure contracts, a la Brady, to pay for less cash to help the team, when he's already done that? NFL.com is saying he has not rejected any Seattle deal yet, just that the talks are ongoing.
Meanwhile, Goodell drags the Brady thing on and on and on. It's just laughable. And as I said before, the more I think about it, the more this should have been a 15 yard penalty at the start of the second half, and a fine for the team for each ball they tampered with. That's it. Now, it's become a joke.
Going back to the Timmy Chang comments. One thing I honestly left out was that it wasn't just that he piled up all those yards on short passes, which he mostly did. But he also played in a run and shoot, in a very soft conference. Same thing with Colt Brennan who followed him. Though Colt threw less interceptions, and had a slightly better arm, maybe. It's the same reason NCAA stars like Andre Ware, or Kliff Kingsbury and BJ Symons from Texas Tech never got anywhere in the NFL. When you throw on almost every down, in a five wide set, and most passes are between 5 and 15 yards, you're going to pile up the numbers. The guys at Hawaii just played against even weaker competition. If you look back at RG3 at Baylor, his career actually started this way with a lot of screens and quick slants. But he had a much stronger arm, and when he developed deep field accuracy, their entire offense changed around that, and look where it took him (at least until he got hurt in the NFL).
In some more amusing news, Adrien Peterson says he's going to try to rush for 2,500 yards this year. The Vikings actually have a fairly talented team, but this is laughable.
And best for last, Chip Kelly says no, he is not like the Kardashians.
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000503829/article/chip-kelly-everyone-wants-their-private-life-private