That’s Doug Baldwin Money: Worth Every Penny?
By Ben Renner
The Seahawks rewarded receiver Doug Baldwin with a big contract this week after he tied for the league lead in touchdowns in 2015. But does he deserve top-tier pay?
Doug Baldwin signed a four-year, $46 million dollar contract to stay with the Seahawks until 2020, making the wide receiver the target of Russell Wilson‘s passes for the foreseeable future. The 27-year-old undrafted Stanford alumnus scored 14 receiving touchdowns last year, tied with Allen Robinson of the Jacksonville Jaguars and Brandon Marshall of the New York Jets for the most in the NFL. Not bad for a ‘pedestrian’ receiver.
Doug Baldwin also caught 78 of the 103 passes targeting him last season for 1069 yards. On the strength of his catch rate and his yardage production, mostly coming out of the slot, interestingly enough, made him arguably the most efficient receiver in the league last year for the NFL’s most efficient offense, according to Football Outsiders.
Baldwin’s contract is now the seventh-highest in the NFL for wide receivers. His reported $24 million guaranteed figure is the sixth-highest in the league, behind Julio Jones, Demaryius Thomas*, Dez Bryant, A.J. Green, and Vincent Jackson. Aside from maybe Jackson, this contingent represents the best receivers in the NFL, minus the Steelers’ Antonio Brown. Doug Baldwin had a breakout season last year, but does he deserve to be paid similarly to Bryant, Green, and Jones?
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If you never watched a Seahawks game last year, or any year, for that matter, since 2011, when Doug Baldwin signed with the team, you’d be scratching your head trying to figure out how a receiver who was outside the top-ten in receiving yards last year earned the seventh-richest contract at his position. Luckily, we have all watched Baldwin play with the Seahawks since he joined the team, or at least last season, and we know his value.
Doug Baldwin was likely the most effective safety valve in football last season. And that’s saying something with guys like Julian Edelman catching drag route after drag route from Tom Brady every game. He had the steady hands that Wilson and company needed to finish strong down the stretch after a slow start to the season. In the NFL, if you massively outperform your contract and you have any kind of leverage, you’re getting your fair reward the following season.
There’s also the scary (for the rest of the NFL) proposition that we have only seen the beginning of Baldwin’s ascension into the elite tier of receivers. He’s still only 27. Even in the NFL, with players retiring in their late 20s, he’s not over the hill. I was also particularly struck by his words in an interview with the Seattle Times’ Jayson Jenks:
I’m not the fastest, the strongest, the most athletic, the tallest. But in order for me to be good at what I do, I have to focus on my craft so much that it alleviates those other things. I can’t have personal relationships like other people do. I can’t spend time on that.
This is from a man who got engaged in March and has spent each of his first five seasons in the NFL bucking expectations. He understands the sacrifices he’s going to have to make to earn his large contract with the Seahawks. Teams have been down on him before for attitude problems and questions about his size, but the doubt only seems to make the man stronger.
Now that you have all dried your eyes after reading that sentimental diatribe, consider the football sense that signing Baldwin to a large contract makes. Yes, it’s a lot of money for a player whose first thousand-yard season came in 2015, and who never scored more than five touchdowns in a season during his career before his league-leading 14 last year. But Doug Baldwin is a player on the rise. It doesn’t always pay to gamble on players based on recent results in the hope that they’ll improve even more or become a hugely more productive player, but in Baldwin’s case, it’s worth the risk.
People forget, despite my constant reminders on this site, that Russell Wilson LED THE LEAGUE in passer rating last year. He had the best five-game stretch in NFL history at one point last season. And who was catching his passes, scoring his touchdowns, getting open on broken plays, and adjusting his routes correctly to Wilson’s throws? Angry Doug Baldwin. Keeping him in Wilson’s huddle if only to keep his most trusted receiver getting open for him is worth a top-ten contract even if Baldwin is unlikely to ever lead the league in receiving yards.
Next: Framing the Seahawks' Salary Cap Situation
Time will tell if the Seahawks overpaid for Doug Baldwin. With expectations already soaring for this team heading into the 2016 season, it seems like a commitment to Super Bowl excellence by John Schneider and company. And that’s why we fans are ecstatic about the contract more than any other reason. $46 million? Yeah, that’s Doug Baldwin money, and he’ll be out to earn it this year.
*I once saw a sign outside a liquor store in Denver that read, “This is the Dawning of Demaryius.” Good one, Broncos fans.