The Denver Broncos have agreed to trade for Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson (the trade becomes official Wednesday), and they will inherit his existing contract.
In Seattle, Wilson will leave behind a huge “dead money” cap hit of $26 million, according to OverTheCap.com, but he’ll have a very team-friendly cap hit in Denver.
This season, Wilson will have a base salary of $19 million and a roster bonus of $5 million. It’s safe to say Wilson will make the team, so the quarterback is set to have a salary cap hit of $24 million, a bargain in today’s QB market.
At the time of this writing, Wilson has the 10th-highest QB cap hit in 2022. That might sound high, but it’s not when you consider the numbers for QBs like Jimmy Garoppolo ($26.95 million), Carson Wentz ($28.29 million), Jared Goff ($31.15 million), Kirk Cousins ($31.41 million) and Matt Ryan ($36.66 million).
Wilson will have similar team-friendly numbers in 2023 with a cap hit of $27 million, on pace to be the ninth-highest paid quarterback in the league.
Of course, Wilson’s contract is likely to change. The Broncos might leave it unchanged for this year and maybe even in 2023, but general manager George Paton undoubtedly planned to give the QB an extension when he agreed to trade three players and five draft picks for the Super Bowl champion.
At some point, Denver is going to give Wilson an extension and it will probably be massive, perhaps in the range of Aaron Rodgers ($46.66 million). For now, though, Wilson’s contract is very manageable.
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