Part 3: The Trade

March 9 – Engelwood, Colorado

“Well, I think I just landed my Manning!”

George Paton seemed extremely proud of himself. He’d scanned the draft projections,

and they had shown there wasn’t a projected right-now starter among the bunch, so he knew he had to do something. It didn’t help that his hand got played for him, in of all places Green Bay. They had brought in Nate Hacket because there was the thought that he might be able to lure a disgruntled MVP to join him in the Mile High City for another run at Lombardi, as had been done in the recent past by his predecessor.

But faced with the option of retaining the services of the very unserviceable Drew Lock,

or trying to get through the season without killing Teddy Bridgewater,

there only seemed to be one option open – a trade.

The rumors about Russell Wilson seemed well-founded. For all the silence coming out of Seahawks country, all one had to do was look at how their season unfolded to know that the potential was there for him to be pried away. Their media couldn’t shut up about it, and all those Winchester geese in the various national networks were devoting five minutes per broadcast to it.

And it’s not like Seattle wasn’t desperate to acquire draft picks – the disaster of the Hawks 2021 Draft showed the world once again that you can’t trade away the future even if the future you’re trading for seems like a sure thing.

Put enough shiny things in front of someone, they can’t say no. Given the tools Denver already had, trading away their first-round & second-round picks seemed to almost make perfect sense. “It’s not like they will use them to draft a quarterback,” George Paton snickered to himself. But someone like Russell doesn’t come cheap in today’s NFL, and he needed to keep teams like New Orleans away. “I might as well throw in 2023’s as well. We’re gonna go so deep, they’ll practically be drafting in the next round!”

With the plan in place, he just needed to get permission from upstairs. Given that nobody seemed in charge right now, he figured it was a sure thing. So, with all the confidence of a senior asking a girl to the prom, he picked up the phone and hoped she’d they’d answer.

Once the call concluded, he felt like a king.

March 9, 2023 – Renton, Washington

An hour or so earlier, over shots of Patron, Pete Carroll had wondered aloud, “who is the stupidest man we could call, and what’s the stupidest offer we could make?” And since Mark Davis didn’t answer his phone,

they went further down the AFC West standings and landed on the Broncos. There was no way they were going to let Russell stay in the NFC, where he had a chance to hurt them during the season or in the playoffs, so looking for dance partners in the AFC was their only option. And although the Broncos didn’t have a particular smell of desperation about them, there was the thinking that their recent administrative turmoil might be something the Seahawks could exploit. After all, the Broncos had signed Green Bay’s QB coach to be their new head coach without actually guaranteeing that the guy he coached would be joining him, so the GM needed to prove his bona fides to the new ownership group, whomever that might end up being. “Those dumbfucks are ripe for the plucking,” John Schneider chuckled as he refilled his shot glass. “Okay, Pete – what do we need?”

As Pete Carroll listened to the words slur out of his GM’s mouth, he knew he had to make a convincing case. He also knew he’d better take notes, because he knew one more shot would mean Schneider wasn’t going to remember anything beyond the flavor of toilet bowl cleaner Aramark was currently using in the shitters. As he salted the rim of a shot glass of water, he made his play:

“Stop fucking trading down! Pick guys who play the positions we need them to play. I always need more running backs. And we gotta get Geno some line help!”

“Gotcha Pete – Pass defence it is!”

“Well,” Pete thought to himself, “time to go with the real plan.” “John, let’s look at things rationally. What would Russell want?”

“Why the fuck would I care about that?!”

“Well, John, it seemed like an open secret that you hated his guts, what with the lack of protection you got him the last few years.”

“Hey – I signed lots of players! That they didn’t work out seems kinda on you.”

“Now John, that would be true if you’d signed position players who played the position we needed them to play. But how many kickers did I have to convert into linemen over the years?” Pete Carroll worried that he might be pressing his luck, but he knew that he had to make the case now, while the tequila was working its magic. So he started speaking the GM language of love. “Let’s talk about what we think we can get from a desperate team. Where do we stand right now?”

“Well… the Jets have our pick at 10. We start in the second round – hey, better than last year! – and we’ve got five total picks this year. That’s not bad. What’s your problem with that?

“C’mon John, I’d like to pick in the first round for once. Those guys can actually be game changers.”

“Jesus, you’re picky.”

“Look – people think Russ has fallen apart because we don’t know what we’re doing. If we make him available, and ask for top dollar, maybe the Broncos will think that we’re doing this just to get him out of the conference. Here, have another shot.” Pete Carroll tops up Schneider’s shot glass

“C’mon man; this isn’t university. Are you trying to fuck me, or fuck me?”

Pete Carroll ignores the casual date-rape analogy  “Listen John, if you ask them for a first- and a second- in the next two years, that’ll come across like both a serious deal and an offloading maneuver. It’ll sound so stupid, it’ll actually make sense. That works in this sport. Remember – I coached Mark Sanchez.”

“But what are we going to throw in to make it look like they got something besides Russ?”

“We can offer to take some of their dead weight. Drew Lock survived last year relatively unscathed. Ask for him, maybe someone else, and toss in a draft pick for use on Sunday. That ought to be just enough to make it happen. Make the call.”

“WOO HOO! Drunk dialing! It’s just like college again!”

An inebriated John Schneider pulls out his BlackBerry Bold and brings up a Lotus Forms page to read from. The 303 area code gets answered on the first ring…

“Hello?”

“George?!” he slurred. “It’s John Schneider. From the Seahawks. I’m here with Pete, and we think we’ve got an offer for you. Got a pen?”

“Can you believe we pulled that shit off?!”

Those were the words that came out of John Schneider’s mouth, as he stared down Pete Carroll after slamming down the receiver.

Somehow, they had gotten five picks over two seasons – plus Drew Lock, DE Shelby Harris, and Tight End Noah Fant, And all it cost them was a player who wanted out of town and a fourth-rounder. John Schneider hadn’t felt this good since the Super Bowl victory.

“Pour me another, Pete. This was a far, far better thing that we have done. I can’t wait for training camp.”