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
One down, two to go.
The Seahawks needed three veteran defensive linemen. They got Ziggy Ansah, the best pass rusher available (if healthy), so now they need two more.
If healthy, Ansah will be a good investment — reportedly $9 million, with $3.75 million in incentives. The Seahawks obviously think he will be available for the full season. But he reportedly won’t be ready until mid-August, and some apparently think he might miss the first month of the season.
For that reason, the Hawks need to add another outside rusher to go with Ansah and the run-stuffing tackle they also need.
The Seahawks used the draft to try to address immediate needs of replacing Frank Clark and Doug Baldwin, but they also sure looked to be hedging their bets on Bobby Wagner and K.J. Wright by drafting two linebackers for the first time in seven years.
Wagner wants to stay in Seattle beyond 2019, but he has seen plenty of guys leave and knows he might join them.
“I want to retire a Seahawk, but I understand it’s a business,” Wagner told NFL Network’s Omar Ruiz on Saturday. “I’m preparing like this is my last year as a Seahawk. If it is, I want to make sure I go out with a bang and make sure I give the city something to remember.”
Continue reading Hawks, Wagner preparing for possible separation
CHAWK TALK: Everything being said about the Seahawks 