Making sense of what Seahawks got from Oakland for Marshawn Lynch

It may seem like the Seahawks didn’t get much in return for Marshawn Lynch. On the surface, they didn’t.

The trade that Seattle and Oakland completed Wednesday includes a swap of late-round picks in next year’s draft, with the Seahawks getting Oakland’s 2018 fifth-rounder in exchange for Lynch’s rights and Seattle’s 2018 sixth-rounder. Moving up one round late in next year’s draft doesn’t amount to much in the way of compensation, but it’s better than what the Seahawks could have gotten for Lynch and perhaps should have gotten, which is nothing at all.

Forget for a moment that Lynch is a franchise icon and that he may be capable of recapturing at least part of his pre-2015 form. That was much less relevant in determining his trade value than was his contractual situation with the Seahawks.

Seattle controlled Lynch’s rights because he was still under contract for two more years when he retired after the 2015 season. Under the terms of that contract, the Seahawks would have been on the hook for Lynch’s $9 million base salary (and the same cap charge) for 2017 had he remained with them. No team would pay that much money to a 31-year-old running back who was out of football in 2016 and is two years removed from his last healthy and productive season. Not even the Seahawks – as much as Lynch has meant to the organization – given their cap situation and the money they already gave to Eddie Lacy.

So if the Seahawks weren’t able to trade Lynch and get his contract off their books, they would have had to release him.

With Oakland knowing that, Seattle had no leverage in trade talks. The Raiders could have waited for the Seahawks to release Lynch and then signed him as a free agent, in which case they wouldn’t have had to give Seattle a draft pick. It wouldn’t have cost them a future compensatory pick, either, because released players don’t factor into that equation.

And because Lynch was only ever truly interested in playing for his hometown team, it’s not as though Seattle had the option of shopping around and trying to leverage a better trade offer from another team. It was Oakland or nothing.

The exact value that Seattle will gain in the swap of 2018 picks won’t be known until that year’s draft order is set. It’ll likely be equivalent in value to acquiring a seventh-rounder.

It’s not much, but it was a good deal for Seattle to get anything at all for Lynch.

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