Paxton Lynch and Jazz Ferguson made redemptive first impressions, Marquise Blair looked like he could be Seattle’s next great safety, Ken Norton Jr. showed signs of how he is going to fabricate a pass rush and the special teams covered all of the bases.
Those were the top takeaways as Seattle beat Denver 22-14 in the preseason opener Thursday.
Continue reading Lynch, Ferguson, Blair, Norton star in opener
As the Seahawks get ready to open the preseason Thursday against Denver, most fans are itching to see rookie wunderkind D.K. Metcalf.
But we won’t see him play with Russell Wilson, because the starting quarterback will not play (a bunch of other starters will sit, too, Pete Carroll said Wednesday).
But there are a lot of other things to keep an eye on, starting with a defensive line that sure doesn’t seem like it will be ready for prime time yet — if ever this season.
When the Seahawks let DeShawn Shead become a free agent last year, rather than tolling his contract as was their right, it seemed like they were just being charitable.
Maybe they were, to some degree, but Pete Carroll also didn’t think Shead was ready to play football.
Shead suffered a torn ACL in the blowout playoff loss in Atlanta to end the 2016 season. Because of that, the Seahawks chose not to tender the restricted free agent in 2017 and instead paid him $1.2 million to rehab almost all season. He got into a couple of games at the end but still apparently was not back to 100 percent in March 2018.
Continue reading Carroll on Shead: ‘I didn’t feel like he was back’ last year
Bobby Wagner’s signing pretty much ends Seattle’s big-money deals for the foreseeable future. Now the Seahawks find themselves in wait-and-see mode, just like John Schneider and Pete Carroll’s early years in Seattle.
The Seahawks acquired and developed a lot of talent from 2010 to 2013 and were able to pay all of the top guys: Earl Thomas, Kam Chancellor, Marshawn Lynch, Richard Sherman, K.J. Wright, Russell Wilson, Wagner, Michael Bennett, Cliff Avril, Doug Baldwin.
The Seahawks are still counting on Wilson, Wagner and Wright — all of whom got third contracts this year. But the team now needs to see which players, if any, become the next generation of stars in Carroll’s program.
The season is still over a month away, but the Seahawks already have tallied a bunch of W’s — Wilson, Wright and now Wagner.
With his $54 million deal, Bobby Wagner joined Russell Wilson ($140 million) and K.J. Wright ($15.5 million) as rare “keepers” for a Seattle club that has undergone some major changes over the past two offseasons.
The Seahawks were wise to hand third deals to all three W’s, but some wonder why they got paid and Earl Thomas and Frank Clark didn’t. Why pay a middle linebacker $18 million a year but refuse to pay your star safety and pass rusher, leaving you with no other established standouts on defense?
One of the few recent feel-good moves by the Seahawks was the somewhat surprising re-signing of K.J. Wright, the longest-tenured Seahawk at eight years and counting.
The wise old vet disseminated some great wisdom and leadership on the first day of camp, offering some inside optimism about Bobby Wagner’s status, plus some level-headed logic about the Earl Thomas snit and some funny introspection.
The Seahawks have done nothing but go backward on their defensive line the past two years — and Jarran Reed’s bizarre six-game suspension has basically completed the retreat to mediocrity.
Over the past two years, the Hawks have lost Cliff Avril, Michael Bennett and Frank Clark from a once very strong D-line. Ziggy Ansah, signed to fill the hole left by Clark, is no sure thing to be ready for the season opener, and now Reed — the top defensive tackle — will miss nearly half of what probably will be his final season in Seattle.
The Seahawks already needed another defensive lineman. Now they need two. And they need to sign them before camp begins this week.
Continue reading Reed’s odd suspension means Hawks need to add two D-linemen now
The Seahawks do not expect Ziggy Ansah to be ready for the start of the season, and Bobby Wagner does expect to be the highest-paid linebacker by next year.
Those were the top two takeaways from the second day of Seattle’s OTAs, which are missing a number of guys recovering from surgeries and injuries.
Wagner, whose OTA activity consists only of coaching younger players, said he wants to surpass C.J. Mosley’s $17 million a year. “That’s the top (of the) linebacker market,” Wagner said. “That is the standard. And so that is the plan: To break that.”
What if we told you the Seahawks could have had Frank Clark, Ziggy Ansah and pretty much all of the same draft picks (just a different pass rusher) and still have room for more, like they do now?
A lot of people are buying Seattle’s claim that the Clark trade to Kansas City enabled Seattle to turn four picks into 11, in what looks to some like an ingenious draft for the ages. Pete Carroll called the trade “the key to kick-start this thing.” And John Schneider said, “That draft choice with Frank definitely helped us.”
But the reality is: Clark became L.J. Collier, and Schneider did what he always planned to do with pick No. 21 — flipping it over and over until it became a six-player pancake. One had nothing to do with the other. And, as much as we love to see an aggressive move from Schneider, he didn’t have to trade Clark to do anything he has done since that deal.
Continue reading Hawks could have had Clark and Ansah, plus basically the same draft
It’s obviously no coincidence that the Seahawks released stalwarts Doug Baldwin and Kam Chancellor the same day they came to an agreement with Ziggy Ansah.
As it turns out, they netted about $9 million in salary cap space, which — surprise! — is exactly what they reportedly are paying Ansah. (The cap savings probably will be more like $8 million once Baldwin claims his CBA-allowed $1.2 million injury payout.)
But the bottom line: The Seahawks still have about $25.5 million in cap space, minus what they paid new nickel competitor Jamar Taylor. Take away $3.3 million for rookie bonus proration and $1.3 million for the practice players, and that leaves around $21 million.
The Seahawks also have to earmark in-season injury replacement money — say $4 million — and Ansah’s unaccounted per-game bonuses, probably around $1 million (they count against the cap as earned). So that leaves about $16 million for free agents and possible extensions for Bobby Wagner and Jarran Reed.
Continue reading Hawks swapped stars for Ansah, so plenty of cap space left
CHAWK TALK: Everything being said about the Seahawks 