DK Metcalf, what will you do with a new $72M Seahawks deal? Help home Mississippi’s kids

DK Metcalf was told it was over. He was never playing football again.

He was 20 years old, supposed to be having the time of his life. Instead, he was in a hospital bed, unconscious, unable to walk. He had suffered a cervical fracture on a kickoff return on Oct. 13, 2018, playing for his hometown University of Mississippi at Arkansas.

He had a scary brace strapped around his immobilized neck. He had an air mask over his nose and mouth. Intravenous tubes and wires crisscrossed into and around his chiseled, 6-foot-4, 229-pound body. His previously NFL-bound body.

In the hours and days after the injury ended his college career, Metcalf was told his NFL career was over, too—before it ever started.

The memory fuels him, and humbles him.

“The first doctor when I was in the hospital told me that,” Metcalf said two years ago. “Heartbreaking.

“I cried. Because football was taken away from me at that moment.”

Football gave back to him, hugely, on Friday.

And the freakishly athletic receiver and match-up nightmare for NFL defensive backs revealed his humanity.

In the main auditorium of Seahawks headquarters, flanked by coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider, the two men who brought Metcalf into the NFL, Metcalf thought Friday afternoon of being unable to move — or dream — in that hospital bed four years ago.

He had just signed a three-year, $72 million contract with a record $30 million signing bonus to remain with Seattle through 2025 and his 28th birthday.

“It’s a huge day for the Seattle Seahawks’ future,” Schneider said.

“It’s a big deal for DK, as well.”

Metcalf sighed. His voice wavered. He thought of home, Oxford, Mississippi.

“I’m about to get emotional, so bear with me,” Metcalf said. “It really hasn’t hit me until now, that I’ll have the opportunity to just help so many people back home, to help my family. And just thinking about when I broke my neck and I was told that I wasn’t going to play football again.

“Now, just this moment happening, it’s just all a blessing.”

The 2020 Pro Bowl wide receiver who set a Seahawks record with 1,303 yards receiving that season is getting $58.2 million in guarantees in his contract. That’s the seventh-most guaranteed money among NFL wide receivers.

The average annual value of $24 million per year gives Metcalf the sixth-richest contract among NFL wide receivers. Stefon Diggs averages $24 million in his deal with the Buffalo Bills.

The signing bonus is the largest for a wide receiver in league history. That’s $30 million in cash going straight into the 24-year-old Metcalf’s bank account, right now.

He thanked his teachers and coaches and teammates from middle school through Oxford High School to hometown Ole Miss and Carroll’s Seahawks for “putting up with me.”

He thanked Seattle teammates Russell Wilson, Bobby Wagner, Duane Brown, Tyler Lockett, Quandre Diggs, Al Woods, Freddie Swain.

“They pushed me,” Metcalf said. “They make it exciting just to come to work.”

Now he can help Mississippi

Asked who or what he’s going to help first, and how, back in Mississippi, Metcalf didn’t hesitate to answer.

“The youth,” he said, “by first helping health care there, and the food. They don’t have the right resources to be successful in those areas.

“So, just building a couple restaurants there to help with health care and go from there.”

Metcalf said that’s a cause that resonates with him because of Mississippi’s historically high rate of obesity among its residents, young and old.

“When I was growing up, Mississippi was also known as the most obese state in the U.S. So, just fixing that problem going from (ranked) 50 to 25 to probably number one.

“Just helping Oxford one restaurant and one kid at a time and just go from there.”

Schneider said the process to get Metcalf his new deal began in early March, at the NFL combine in Indianapolis. That’s where Schneider and top Seahawks contract executive Matt Thomas met with Metcalf’s agent, Tory Dandy. It was at the same time Schneider was finalizing the huge trade of Wilson to Denver.

The deal made Metcalf, who is entering the final year of his rookie contract, the Seahawks’ target as their new foundation player on offense past 2023.

“I also want to especially thank DK. I want to thank you for your professionalism and your patience through this process,” Schneider said. “People on the outside, when they see these huge contracts, are just blown away, and it is a huge blessing. They don’t understand the stress that goes along with a negotiation like this.

“Again, it’s a huge blessing, but it’s a long process and there is a lot that goes into it for the player, his family, and his loved ones, so I just want to thank you for your patience and professionalism.”

Likened to Chancellor

The GM likened Metcalf to Kam Chancellor, the soul of Seattle’s Super Bowl teams in the 2013 and ‘14 seasons.

Around the Seahawks, that’s mammoth praise.

“You talk about two individuals so similar,” Schneider said. “Just professionals, intense, great workers, good people, treat everybody in the building really well, huge competitors.

“We were here celebrating K.J. (Wright) yesterday, same thing.”

Schneider turned to Metcalf, who was smiling and seated immediately to the GM’s right.

“As soon as you walked in the building, everybody knew you were part of our family,” Schneider said. “It’s the pre-draft process, you are trying to figure out the person, but everybody in this building thinks the world of you. And I hope you know that.”

He has 72 million reason to know that now.

Contract details

Metcalf is due to earn $3.99 million in the final year of the contract he signed after Seattle traded up into the bottom of the second round to get him in the 2019 NFL draft. His draft classmate and former University of Mississippi teammate A.J. Brown got a $100 million, four-year deal from Philadelphia in a trade from Tennessee this spring.

It was the latest example of how the market for wide receivers has skyrocketed this offseason. That had Metcalf in line for at least $25 million per year for 2023 and beyond.

Ultimately, Metcalf took a tad less than that — $24 million annually — in exchange for a record signing bonus he will get in cash right away, up front.

The three-year contract is also unusually short by Seahawks standards for foundational players. The team typically wants to go to four or five years, to spread and back load the salary-cap hits of rich new deals across additional, more team-friendly years.

Metcalf’s salary-cap charges are $8.8 million this year, $13.7 million in 2023 (the first year of the new deal), $24.5 million in 2024 and $29.5 million in ‘25.

This deal gets Metcalf potentially eligible for free agency, or a rich, third Seahawks contract, while he’s just months past his 28th birthday.

Yet Metcalf doesn’t think Friday’s contract signing means he’s made it. His goal wasn’t to make it all the way back from that broken neck into the NFL, or to this second, rich contract in the league.

“My goal is to make it to the Hall of Fame,” Metcalf said.

“So, still not done.”