Broncos quarterback Russell Wilson's new contract extension was a hot topic in the NFL world on Thursday morning.
Among the many immediate reactions was the response from prominent NFL writer Mike Florio, who characterized Wilson's five-year deal as team-friendly because the contract isn't fully guaranteed.
Perhaps not surprisingly, at least one NFL agent agreed with Florio.
Zac Hiller of LAA Sports slammed Wilson and suggested the nine-time Pro Bowler may have accepted the non-fully guaranteed deal in exchange for something "behind the scenes."
"Company guy," Hiller tweeted. "Doing favors for the establishment to keep the rest of the men down. He'll get something behind the scenes for this"
Obviously, Hiller has a stake in seeing the market swing toward fully guaranteed deals -- like the one reached by Deshaun Watson and the Browns -- so that must be considered when evaluating his remark. He's not a neutral party. Still, it's relatively unusual for an agent to speak out so forcefully, and the blistering response didn't go unnoticed.
Meanwhile, Florio wrote at Pro Football Talk that Wilson's deal "counts as a win for the NFL."
A wise man once said, repeatedly on ESPN, “Once is an accident, twice is a trend.” The new Russell Wilson contract suggests that the fully-guaranteed contract given to Brown quarterback Deshaun Watson was the accident, and the absence of full guarantees for veteran quarterback deals will continue to be the trend.
If anyone else was going to be getting a fully-guaranteed deal, it was Wilson. He had the leverage; the Broncos gave up a huge haul of picks to get him. He has the credentials. He went to two Super Bowls, and he’s a nine-time Pro Bowler. He has the agent, a one-client-only representative who had always driven a very hard bargain. He has a team with unlimited resources, fronted by new Wal-Mart-money owners who can write a check of any size for placement of the future payments in escrow.
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