When Matt Flynn signed with the Seattle Seahawks last off-season, he knew he was going to have to compete for the team’s starting quarterback job.
He didn’t expect to be competing with Russell Wilson.
The Seahawks signed Flynn last March to a three-year, $26 million deal to presumably be the team’s starting quarterback. Head coach Pete Carroll never said Flynn would be the starter, instead saying he would have to compete for the job with incumbent starter Tarvaris Jackson. But what Flynn didn’t expect was for a third-round rookie to come in and take the job out from underneath him.
“I’ll forever regret the fact that we never got the chance to see him play very much. Everything he did was on point; Russell Wilson just never let it happen. As we move forward we’re going to figure it out,” Carroll said.
Flynn appeared in just three games for Seattle, all in mop-up duty, in the Seahawks three blowout victories in December. He completed 5 of 9 passes for 68 yards on the season. Flynn said he doesn’t regret signing with Seattle but it certainly can’t be the situation he was expecting to find himself in either.
“He handled it like a real champion kid, he competed in practice on a regular basis, he never did want to accept, and he still thinks he’s the best quarterback in the program and I admire him for thinking that way,” Carroll said.
A fairly weak draft class at the quarterback position could lead the Seahawks to look to maximize their value in Flynn by trading him to a quarterback-needy team.
Seattle isn’t strapped by Flynn’s salary so much that have to move him. With Wilson on a rookie contract for at least another two seasons (before he can renegotiate his contract), the overall expense to Seattle’s quarterback position is still reasonably affordable. That being said, backup quarterbacks aren’t usually paid $7.25 million either, which is what Flynn is due in 2013 (although only $2 million is guaranteed).
With the Seahawks’ offense incorporating the read-zone option as heavily as they did the last half of the season, Seattle could look to find a backup quarterback more suited to run that offense if Wilson was to get injured.
“We’ve talked a lot about that. It’d be nice to have another guy that might be able to be a factor that way,” Carroll said.