You can’t blame Sheldon Richardson and Tom Johnson for having axes to grind Monday night against the Seahawks — who, by the way, could have used either guy this season.
To recap why the defensive tackles are displeased with the Seahawks: Seattle lowballed Richardson before free agency and cut Johnson in September.
Continue reading ‘Terrible’ offer & ‘business decision’ motivate ex-Hawks
The good news: The Seahawks don’t have to play in Denver and Chicago during the winter. The bad news: They have to open with consecutive road games.
The opener in Denver and the Monday night game in Chicago in Week 2 mark the third time since 2011 the Hawks have started with two straight road games. They opened 0-2 in both 2011 and 2015.
Seattle’s 2018 schedule is weighted toward road games early and home games late: The Seahawks play five of the first seven on the road and four of the final five at home (three in prime time).
They have five prime-time games — four in Seattle, where the Hawks are 17-2 in night games (including playoffs) under Pete Carroll. They are 26-5-1 in prime time overall under Carroll.
The Seahawks are working hard to refortify their defensive line. And it looks like it might all hinge on what they think of Ndamukong Suh.
Seattle secured four linemen Wednesday, retaining Dion Jordan, Quinton Jefferson and Branden Jackson on tenders and adding Barkevious Mingo, who is expected to fill Bruce Irvin’s old role as a linebacker and pass rusher. The team also set up a visit with defensive tackle Quinton Dial.
But the Seahawks are after bigger fish, if they can get one. The D-tackle market has been relatively slow to move, and the Seahawks obviously hope to take advantage of that as they talk with Suh and Sheldon Richardson.
No surprise: John Schneider didn’t want to gamble with the franchise tag.
Five teams use the keeper tool (and Chicago used the transition tag), but Seattle declined for the eighth straight year — choosing not to lock in Sheldon Richardson.
Schneider will try to re-sign the defensive tackle before free agency, but he obviously was leery of tendering Richardson for $13.9 million — and thus setting the negotiating floor there. And Schneider obviously wasn’t interested in the other potential benefits of tagging, which we outlined.
Continue reading As expected, Schneider is letting Sheldon go
John Schneider has been a gambling man plenty of times in the past, and here’s a gamble he really needs to make today: Use the franchise tag on Sheldon Richardson.
Schneider has a base 75 percent chance of winning a tag gamble. The only negative would come if Richardson insisted on signing and playing on the $13.9 million tender. That seems very unlikely, which leaves three winning scenarios for Schneider: (1) Strike a long-term deal, (2) trade him for a Day 2 pick (and something else), (3) rescind the tag, let Richardson leave in free agency and end up with a high comp pick in 2019.
At the Combine last Friday, Schneider said he needed to “figure out how to compensate” for Seattle’s gaping hole on Day 2 of the draft. Trading 32-year-old Michael Bennett won’t do it. But tagging Richardson likely would — whether he stays or goes.
John Schneider is focused on moving younger players into the Seahawks’ lineup, which is why he is willing to move aging stars.
Two of his big points Friday at the Combine were about (1) trying to find a way to bridge the big draft gap created by the “go for it” injury-replacement deals for Sheldon Richardson and Duane Brown and (2) getting recent draft picks to pull their weight.
Schneider also said he wants to keep Richardson (he met with his agents Thursday night) but was not planning “at this point” to use the franchise tag on him by Tuesday’s deadline. “We have time,” he said, “but we have more people that we have to talk to this weekend. We’re not done with all our meetings.”
“Everybody’s talking to everybody” — Pete Carroll
That about sums up the state of affairs at the Combine, although Carroll was talking specifically about Earl Thomas there.
Carroll revealed very little about Seattle’s direction with contracts, trades and free agents, but he offered a few little nuggets.
Among the tidbits: He has talked to Thomas; John Schneider is talking to other teams about possible deals; the franchise tag is still an option for Sheldon Richardson; the team has talked to DeShawn Shead about playing safety again; Carroll has not talked to Michael Bennett; and Carroll would love to keep Jimmy Graham (and every free agent).
It’s looking more and more like the Richardsons will indeed join Jimmy Graham in departing Seattle next month and Legion of Boomers Richard Sherman and Earl Thomas will not be going anywhere.
Here’s the latest on those guys and more free agency scuttlebutt:
A report from NFL Network confirmed what we have said all offseason: It doesn’t look like either Sherman or Thomas will be traded. Sherman has no value while rehabbing his torn Achilles and the Seahawks would prefer a long-term deal with Thomas, unless they get a great offer.
It turns out that idea about using the transition tag on Sheldon Richardson is not quite as good as we thought it was.
We recently posited the idea that John Schneider might prefer the transition tender to the franchise marker because (1) it is cheaper, (2) Richardson could shop himself, (3) Schneider still could match and (4) Seattle still could get a third-round comp pick in 2019 if Richardson left.
That all still applies, except No. 4. It turns out the NFL recently changed the rule and transition players no longer qualify for comp picks. This was discovered by Nick Korte of Over The Cap in 2016, as related to Miami rescinding the transition tag for Olivier Vernon. (We usually do the right research to get facts straight before posting anything, but we missed this change.)
It takes away some of the leverage we thought Schneider might have if he chose the cheaper tag.
Continue reading Correction: Transition tag not as great as we thought
In the next week or two, we’re going to find out a whole lot (OK, at least a little) about the Seahawks’ offseason plans.
Today is the first day of the two-week “tag” window, which may or may not be pertinent to the Seahawks.
A lot of people expect John Schneider to franchise Sheldon Richardson. We think the transition tag would be better (unless Schneider plans to trade Sheldon). And it’s still most likely that Schneider won’t use a tag at all.
CHAWK TALK: Everything being said about the Seahawks 