Russell Wilson Is Somehow Being Paid Less than His Backups

Seattle Seahawks starting quarterback Russell Wilson has established himself as a marquee player in the NFL, winning a Super Bowl in only his second season in the league.

However, his contract doesn't currently reflect this reality.

The scary talents of Tavaris Jackson and the recently acquired Terrelle Pryor sit behind Wilson on the Seahawks depth chart. Jackson is scheduled to earn $1.25million carrying the clipboard in 2014, while Pryor will rake in $705,000 to do the same.

What, you might be asking, is Wilson going to make in 2014?

The answer is $622,434.

While that's a nice hunk of change that most of us mere mortals would likely do unspeakable things to obtain, in the context of the NFL and Russell Wilson, this total is something of a joke.

This peculiar scenario comes courtesy of the 2011 collective bargaining agreement, which changed the structure of rookie contracts by essentially setting up a rookie salary cap.

Wilson is currently locked into his original rookie contract, which will pay him the aforementioned amount. Of course, he'll be eligible to renegotiate after the 2014 season, and I'm quite sure the Seahawks will be more than willing to pay their young quarterback in relative proportion to other upper-echelon quarterbacks in the league.

The new makeup of rookie contracts does make sense in theory, as the guaranteed money being handed out previously to completely unproven entities was getting a bit out of hand. However, the constraints created by this restructuring do cause the occasional financial anomaly when a player such as Wilson enjoys immediate success.

So, for the moment, there are a disturbing amount of NFL signal callers making more scratch than Russell Wilson.

However, there are certainly worse injustices in the world.