That was my impression, too. I can understand being high on a youngen like Clay...... but that's entirely unrelated to grabbing an immediate improvement to your offense by upgrading Fasano. Like Disgustipate pointed out, we're likely to be using more 3+ WR sets to keep our best guys on the field (with Bess being one of them.... and now Gates), so in my eyes it would make a great deal of sense to have that lone TE be someone who makes a bigger overall impact (like Miller).
How do you know it wasn't already known how much he wanted? I think it says a lot that SEA was the only team that was ever really reported to be talking with him. Meaning, they were the only idiots who would pay that amount of money.
