At tight end for Seattle, it’s the same as it ever was — and that was good enough to get to the Super Bowl the past two years.
Plenty of people are all atwitter about Jimmy Graham’s season-ending injury and wondering how the Seahawks will replace him.
Well, how about the same way they replaced Zach Miller last year? Luke Willson, Cooper Helfet and a new guy.
Free-agency month is over. Draft month has begun.
Sure, the Seahawks are still working to address some minor holes in the roster, looking for cheap veteran linemen while bringing back some of their remaining free agents.
And, they obviously will be looking to get Russell Wilson’s contract extension done by the end of the month.
But with just four weeks left until the draft, the Hawks are in the final stretch of evaluations.
With James Carpenter and Max Unger gone, they clearly need offensive linemen. And they are looking everywhere.
It turns out the Seahawks were not just getting rid of Max Unger in the Jimmy Graham deal.
Saints coach Sean Payton specifically asked John Schneider about acquiring the former Pro Bowl center, and then the two sides began talking about compensation.
The first-round pick the Hawks included in the deal made it seem as if Seattle had approached New Orleans about Graham, but that’s not the way it happened, according to Schneider and other sources.
“They had strong interest in Max,” the Seattle GM told 710 ESPN. “They really want to fix their center positon (and) concentrate on their defense. For us, it was, ‘OK, who are the players involved?’ (Graham) came into the fray and we started talking about it.”
The Saints apparently were still at odds with Graham over the franchise tag battle last year, when the tagged him as a tight end and he filed a grievance seeking to be tagged as a wide receiver, which would have paid him about $5 million more. He ended up signing a four-year, $40 million contract.
Now the Hawks have him for the final three years of that deal — assuming they don’t change it or he somehow doesn’t work out.
This is the latest — and perhaps best — chance for the Seahawks to create the kind of tight-end-focused offense they have tried in the past.
Continue reading Saints’ interest in Unger creates another shot at TE-focused offense
Redemption, resilience, trust, teamwork.
Other than a trip to the Super Bowl, those were the themes of the Seahawks’ historic comeback win over the Green Bay Packers, 28-22 in overtime, on Sunday.
For much of the game, Russell Wilson, Jermaine Kearse and Doug Baldwin were the Three Stooges — taking turns poking each other in the eyes, hitting each other in the head and tripping over each other.
Wilson threw four interceptions — all on passes intended for Kearse, who had two go off his hands — and Baldwin fumbled on a kick return and dropped two passes himself.
But all three redeemed themselves on the winning drive in overtime — Wilson hitting Baldwin twice for 45 yards and then finding Kearse for the winning 35-yard touchdown.
After the game, Wilson and Kearse were overcome with emotion after their rollercoaster day.
Continue reading The hallmarks of that win: Redemption, trust and resilience
Russell Wilson has almost always played well in the playoffs — six games and counting — and his performance Saturday against Carolina was his best yet.
The third-year quarterback buried the ghosts of his poor home games earlier in the season with a nearly perfect outing that also was probably his best game of the 2014 season.
He threw a postseason-career-high three touchdown passes and tallied a 149.2 rating, completing 68.2 percent, while tying Matt Hasselbeck for most playoff wins in Seattle history (five).
Wilson now has nine TD passes and just one interception in six postseason games, and his passer rating has been over 100 in four of them. In fact, his postseason passer rating of 109.6 is the best in NFL history (hat tip to Hawk Blogger for first reporting that stat).
So why was Wilson so good vs. the Panthers? (1) His offensive line kept him clean, (2) he was perfect on third downs, (3) he got the ball out quickly when he could and (4) he trusted his receivers to come down with long passes.
Continue reading A look at Wilson’s best playoff performance yet
Wide receiver Paul Richardson’s torn ACL is bad news, especially because the rookie had emerged as a key contributor, but the Seahawks have the depth to withstand it.
Richardson’s loss is Kevin Norwood’s gain as the other rookie, who was inactive Saturday against Carolina, figures to play vs. Green Bay next Sunday and in the Super Bowl.
The Seahawks have had a tumultuous season at tight end, so why stop now?
Zach Miller has been on IR since midseason, and Tony Moeaki and Cooper Helfet have been taking turns sitting out games for the past month — leaving Luke Willson to alternate great weeks with horrendous ones.
Expect more of the same.
Few doubted the Seahawks would beat the offense-challenged Arizona Cardinals on Sunday night. The only question was whether Seattle’s struggling offense would manage to score any touchdowns.
Russell Wilson and company answered that emphatically, amassing a team-record 596 yards and scoring five times in a stunningly offensive 35-6 victory that served notice to the entire league that the Hawks are poised to run over anyone in their path on the way to another Super Bowl title.
Wilson played perhaps his best game of the season, throwing for a career-high 339 yards and two touchdowns and running for 88 yards and a score. He and Marshawn Lynch both turned in mindboggling TD runs — juking, stiff-arming and overpowering Arizona defenders — to put the game out of reach in the fourth quarter.
Combined with a defense that expectedly shut down the Cardinals — 216 yards, just 29 rushing — it was Seattle’s most complete, dominant victory since the opener against Green Bay. And it was Arizona’s first loss of the season at home.
It gave the Seahawks control of the NFC West and the inside track to the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs — both of which can be theirs with a home win over the St. Louis Rams next week.
Tony Moeaki has made a heck of an impact in just three games with the Seahawks.
The tight end scored a touchdown in his first game — against his old team, Kansas City. He led the Hawks with four catches in the win against Arizona, making two first downs. And then he pulled off Seattle’s longest play of the year — a 63-yard gain that maybe should have been a 64-yard touchdown — against San Francisco.
It has been a heck of a start for a guy general manager John Schneider picked up four weeks ago to replace Zach Miller, who is out for the season with an ankle injury.
Russell Wilson already loves Moeaki and looks for him in key spots, like the broken play that resulted in the 63-yard pass play.
“Moeaki, man, that’s a tremendous football player,” Wilson said Thursday after the Seahawks’ 19-3 win over the 49ers. “He knows what to do, he runs tremendous routes, he has a great feel for the game, get in and out of his routes at the right time, he has unbelievable hands. His adjustment to us is pretty spectacular to see in terms of how quickly he has made a difference. We are excited to have him on our team and to see all the plays he makes.”
While the defense deals with the sudden loss of top-notch nose tackle Brandon Mebane for the rest of the season, the offense is making plans to go on without Zach Miller — perhaps forever.
With Luke Willson trying to rally from a sprained ankle and Cooper Helfet dealing with a bum knee (and Anthony McCoy on IR), the Hawks’ only two healthy tight ends right now are guys they just signed.
CHAWK TALK: Everything being said about the Seahawks 