i swear, every year if they don't spend all of their cap room in 5 minutes the Seahawks aren't doing enough. I mean...free agency has only been like a week or two right and they have signed probably like 9 or 10 players right? This is why none of us run a team's front office. If palatable deals can be made they will be made. Whether that is at the start of free agency, the middle of free agency or towards the end of free agency or even during the season when necessary. They have probably done as much as they can do for now and will continue to do so while they wait for other situations to pan out.
They can't just continuously go after certain players over and over and hope that they will eventually sign only to see them go somewhere else and other players similar to the profiles for what they need for different positions get gobbled up during that time and so they lose out on every player basically. For a lot of these players there is already a market and for some of those players it is what it is and other times, like with Clowney, it is not unfolding how everyone thinks. They can't mortage the next 5-10 years on extremely bad contracts overpaying for a player before the market for those players is even set.
In the example of Clowney, he thought he was going to be getting 20m+ a season and it looks as though the market has fallen far below that. the speculation, true or not, is that the Hawks are going to be prepared to offer him 13-14m a year. Clowney is probably pretty upset that his market is not anywhere close to what he thinks it will be. It seems, if the rumors are true with the Hawks, they have set a good value for him in this market, because no other teams have been jumping to get him at the price he had hoped for. there are so many factors into his value, and such that I don't want to get into all of them here but I feel like if the hawks do feel like they might lose him as the off season goes on but they don't really want to lose him but another team wants to go a bit above the unsubstantiated offer many of us have read about here..i am sure they won't get into a bidding war if it comes down to it, but I wouldn't be surprised if no one suddenly puts up 18-20 mil for him but there is heat from another team he might still possibly get 16-17 a year from the hawks. Again, all of this in this scenario is unsubstantiated because no one really has confirmed any talks and numbers thrown out for contracts other than the hearsay we have read here. it is an example, however, of the front office playing the smart game, the long game..and making sure they don't wreck their chances to fill out the roster the way it will need to in order to get ready for next season.