Ruskell's Big Mistake

I wrote sometime ago, in a post far, far, away, that I thought Tim Ruskell's biggest mistake wasn't the transition tag on Hutch, which the Vikings and the special master essentially chose to make a worthless tool, but paying Shaun for past production and not future performance.

Football Outsider, and contributer to profootballtalk.com, Michael David Smith has a short piece over at Aol Fanhouse, which calls Shaun's contract one of the worst ever.

Essentially, the Colts and Seahawks were both in the same position. Through various sources that offseason, it became known that either Shaun Alexander or Edgerrin James could be had for a 2nd. There were no takers. Eventually, the Colts let Edge test the market. He is now grinding out 3.5 yds per carry in AZ.

The Seahawks went to the Superbowl for the first time in team history. They felt an obligation to the Shaun and to the fans. The payed from their hearts and not from their heads, else they wouldn't have given a 29 year old who just carried the ball 370 times almost 12 million in bonuses. I can't blame them that much. The team will survive the dead money, but the Colts now have a world championship and the Hawks are dolling out more bonus money to new running backs, hoping to get one.