The famous and controversial "poison pill" that brought the prime of Steve Hutchinson's hall of fame career to Minnesota and led to an NFL rule change probably never would have happened if then-Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren had been in the office on that fateful day back on Feb. 23, 2006.
"So Mike leaves town and says to the front office, 'We're good on Hutch, right?' " said former Vikings coach Brad Childress. "They say, 'Yeah, yeah, we're putting the franchise tag on him. Don't worry.'"
Only the Seahawks didn't go that route. To save about $600,000, then-general manager Tim Ruskell reneged without telling Holmgren or giving him a chance to fight it. Rather than use the franchise tag, which essentially would have killed the market for Hutchinson by including two first-round draft picks as compensation for losing him, the Seahawks used the transition tag, which came with a right of first refusal only.
"They left the door open, and it became the perfect storm," said Rob Brzezinski, Vikings executive vice president of football operations and the architect of the poison pill as the team's longtime salary cap guy.
"You're always trying to understand the system and be creative and give your team a competitive advantage. What we did is something you'd only consider for a unique player. And obviously Hutch going into the Hall of Fame justifies that, I think."
Hutchinson will be enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio on Saturday night. A member of the Class of 2020, he finally gets his moment on football's biggest stage after the pandemic canceled last year's events.
Six of Hutchinson's 12 NFL seasons as a dominant left guard came with the Vikings (2006-11). Three of his five first-team All-Pro nods and four of his seven Pro Bowls also came with the Purple.
None of that would have happened had Brzezinski not put a clause in the offer sheet that said the entire seven-year, $49 million deal – a record-setting amount for a guard at the time – became fully guaranteed if Hutchinson wasn't the highest-paid offensive lineman on the team. That would never be the case in Minnesota but in Seattle, left tackle Walter Jones was making more money.
"I never wanted to leave Seattle and I know the Seahawks would have matched the offer without the poison pill," Hutchinson said. "We were coming off the Super Bowl and had great chemistry on the offensive line. But it was a no-brainer for me. On one hand, you had a team that wasn't doing much of anything to keep me. And on the other hand, you had a team thinking outside the box to make sure they got me."
From Holmgren's viewpoint, the move was below the belt. He was angry at the Vikings and even angrier at Hutchinson.
"It was a business decision, so I never really had an issue with anyone in Seattle outside of Holmgren," Hutchinson said. "Right after it went down, I went back to Seattle, and Mike Holmgren and I had a big falling out. Big screaming match about the whole thing.
"It took about 10 years before we kind of rekindled. Everything is good now."
Childress and Holmgren had been coaching acquaintances going back to when Childress and Andy Reid were at Northern Arizona and Holmgren was at BYU. They also shared the same agent, Bob LaMonte. Holmgren tried to use those connections to talk Childress into dropping the poison pill.
"Seattle had seven days to match our offer sheet," said Childress, who was a rookie head coach at the time. "Mike calls me and says, 'Listen, this poison pill thing, it's not a good deal for anybody.' And he says, 'As a matter of fact, it's really frowned on in league circles. It's just understood that you don't do this. On and on.'"
Childress' response: Sorry, but no deal.
"Of course, it wasn't too long after we signed Hutch that Mike called me back and told me what they were planning to do with Nate Burleson," Childress said.
Burleson was a restricted free agent. Seattle signed him to an offer sheet with multiple poison pills. Among them was a clause that guaranteed the contract in full if Burleson played more than five games in a season in Minnesota.
Burleson became a Seahawk, but the Vikings did receive a third-round pick in return. The league, which already was mad at the Vikings, became incensed at the situation.
"Later on, through the collective bargaining agreement, they made the rule change and closed the loophole," Childress noted. "Frankly, it should have been closed a long time before that."
The size of Hutchinson's record-setting contract also turned heads around the league.
"I remember when we did that deal, [Patriots owner] Mr. [Robert] Kraft criticized us, saying it's lunacy to pay a guard like that," Brzezinski said. "A couple years later, he paid Logan Mankins, his guard, [$51 million over six years]. And as you can see, over time, the guard market has exploded."
Part of Brzezinski's "perfect storm" scenario included a financial commitment from ownership. The Wilf family was in its first offseason as owners after about five years of Red McCombs' frugal spending.
"Paying great players, you can never go wrong," Brzezinski said. "But you can't do something like that without the Wilf family giving us all the resources possible to be competitive."
Former Vikings center Matt Birk said the players were shocked at how the 2006 offseason unfolded.
"All I knew was Red, so it was different," Birk said. "The Wilf's first year, we got Hutch, [Ben] Leber, Chester Taylor. We never went after guys, especially on the O-line. When we got Hutch, it was like, 'Oh my gosh, we're signing the premier guard in the NFL. This is different.'"
Hutchinson returned to Seattle as a Viking on Oct. 22, 2006.
"I just remember all the boos and chants against me," said Hutchinson, who now works for the Seahawks as personnel consultant. "I was like, 'Wait a minute, it was just seven months ago that I was in the Super Bowl with you guys.'"
The Vikings won 31-13. One of the touchdowns was a franchise-record 95-yard touchdown run by Taylor. Right over the left side behind tackle Bryant McKinnie, Hutchinson, Birk and fullback Tony Richardson.
"That was kind of ironic," Hutchinson said. "That was our bread-and-butter play in Seattle all those years. Kind of sweet."
Or, from Seattle's perspective, one seriously bitter poison pill.
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