Seattle Seahawks: There is No Reason for Seahawks to Part With Marshawn Lynch in 2015

While it is possible the Seahawks or Marshawn Lynch may choose to move on, there are no football or financial reasons for the team to part with their best offensive player prior to the 2015 season. 

There has been a lot of discussion about running back Marshawn Lynch his future with the Seattle Seahawks recently. The assumption is that Seattle and Lynch will part ways before free agency begins in March. The problem with this idea is that none of the reasons given for this to happen make much sense.

Reporters, when they actually get to talk to him, have begun openly asking him about 2015 in interviews. On the surface, this is a bit odd. Lynch is one of the best players at his position in the NFL, and he’s under contract with the Seahawks through the 2015 season. Neither of those facts have prevents the rumors from flying that the Seahawks will be looking to move on from Lynch in the offseason.

Of course Lynch is 28, which is near the end of a running back’s lifespan in the NFL. Any time Lynch’s future in Seattle is discussed, his age is always front and center of the discussion. Interestingly though, Lynch isn’t showing any signs of age yet. He is running as hard as ever, and is having a statistically great season.

For a power runner like Lynch, the first thing that will drop statistically will be his yards after contact. Lynch has been very consistent in this regard since joining the Seahawks in 2011, and his stats from this year match his other years with Seattle.

Data from Pro Football Focus (subscription required)

Clearly Lynch isn’t yet in any sort of age-related decline. Lynch has been even better in 2014 than he was in Seattle’s Super Bowl season last year. If the Seahawks decide to move from Lynch before the 2015 season, it won’t be for football reasons.

Salary Cap Concerns

The most common reason people assume that the Seahawks will move on from Lynch this offseason is because of the salary cap. Seattle does need to re-sign Russell Wilson after all, and he isn’t going to come cheap. Interestingly, the Seahawks can easily afford Wilson, Lynch, and all their other top free agents.

The Seahawks will go into the offseason with just over $105 million in contracts and dead money on the cap for the 2015 season. In contrast, the San Francisco 49ers already have over $150 million of their 2015 cap space accounted for.

With an estimated 2015 salary cap over $146 million for next season, coupled with $7 million in cap space that will be rolled over this season, Seattle will have approximately $48 million of salary cap space available to re-sign players and improve their team. These numbers include Lynch and his $8.5 million cap number still on the books for the Seahawks.

That is a lot of available cap space. Even with key players like quarterback Russell Wilson, linebacker K.J. Wright, and defensive end Cliff Avril that need to be re-signed, the Seahawks have plenty of salary-cap space to keep Lynch and still improve the roster.

Lynch and the Team

The other part of this issue is Lynch’s relationship with the organization. Things are clearly strained after the running back tried to hold out during training camp for a larger contract. Exactly how strained things are depends on who you ask.

Ask NFL.com’s Michael Silver, and he’ll tel you that the player and team have major issues, and that Lynch is extremely unhappy. Of course he bases his claims on some fairly innocuous quotes and insinuates that Lynch getting medical treatment on his ailing back was somehow a personal protest against head coach Pete Carroll.

Ask his teammates, like star free safety Earl Thomas, and they’ll tell you there’s no division between Lynch and the team. The teammates love him and know how important he is to the success of the franchise.

Pete Carroll admitted on Monday that he and Lynch have a somewhat strained relationship, but went out of his way to praise Lynch in almost every possible way in that same interview. Carroll clearly understands how important Lynch is to the success of the team.

Back in August, the Seahawks even backed off their own hard-line stance about not giving Lynch any additional guaranteed money, agreeing to transfer some of his 2015 salary into a 2014 bonus. The Seahawks have worked hard to accommodate Lynch and keep him a part of their team.

It all comes down to what Lynch and Carroll are comfortable with. If both of them are willing to co-exist as they have all this season, then there’s nothing in this story than indicates that a split is necessary.

The Final Word

There is no way for anyone, other than perhaps general manager John Schneider or Pete Carroll, to say definitively what is going to happen with Lynch and the Seahawks this offseason. There are a lot of moving parts here, and how they all fit together in the end is anyone’s guess.

The key is that Seattle’s hands aren’t tied in any way. If they decide to keep Lynch and make things work in the locker room, then they have the cap room to do so. Things also aren’t nearly as bad between Lynch and the team as certain national media outlets would have you believe.

If the Seahawks do decide to move on, then there are no excuses if it doesn’t work out and the team fails to win without the mercurial star. The team will have no one to blame but themselves if they are unable to make it work out in 2015.

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