Seahawks’ right CB battle: The past (Maxwell) vs. future (Flowers) vs. wild card (Johnson)

Richard Sherman is gone, to San Francisco. This week he’s actually been in Houston, showing off his Stanford education. He put on his helmet at the start of a fight between his 49ers and the Texans at a joint practice there this week.

Meanwhile back in Seattle, the Richard Sherman Carryover Effect continues.

Halfway through the Seahawks’ first preseason without Sherman since 2010, his former team doesn’t know who is going to start the season at cornerback.

The Seahawks have moved Shaquill Griffin, their starting right cornerback opposite Sherman as a rookie in 2017, to replace Sherman on the left side. Griffin has noticeably more swagger on the practice field in his second NFL preseason. It’s showing up in aggressive pass break-ups then theatrical celebrations and woofing at receivers after his bold plays.

Wonder who showed him how to do that in Seattle?

Griffin’s switch to replace Sherman has created a hole at right cornerback. Byron Maxwell began training camp filling it. But at 30 years old and on a one-year contract he is not the future at the position.

With Sherman gone, Kam Chancellor retired and Earl Thomas 17 days into his holdout, Maxwell is currently the most-tenured member of the Seahawks’ remade secondary. The former “Legion of Boom” cornerback started the team’s Super Bowls at the end of the 2013 and ’14 seasons.

Maxwell has noticeably assumed an elder-like role. Almost every day, a Seahawks defensive back approaches him during practice to ask him a question on scheme or coverage or technique. Wednesday it was Griffin. Thursday, the day training camp officially broke, it was Tre Flowers.

Flowers is the future. He’s the fifth-round pick Seattle drafted in April. Flowers is the same height as Sherman (6-feet-3), with longer arms and, like Sherman, an attitude—though his is not yet nearly as developed or backed by accomplishments.

“Oh, he’s comin’. He’s comin’. The thing I like about Tre, it absolutely irritates him when receivers catch the ball,” said Bradley McDougald, who also said he assumes he will be the starting strong safety with Tedric Thompson at free safety for the absent Thomas in Seattle’s opener Sept. 9 at Denver.

“He doesn’t want anyone to touch the ball, and if he does he’s trying to get it out in any way,” McDougald said of Flowers. “Those type of plays mess up his day, and that’s good for a football player. You want a guy who’s out there who doesn’t want anyone to touch the ball whole game, not one play. I just love his attitude.

“He’s young. He’s going to make some mistakes. But the thing about it him, I just want to keep that fire going. ... It’s going to show up.”

It showed up last week. Maxwell was out with a hip-flexor injury. Flowers became the starter for two practices, the preseason opener against Indianapolis, then three more practices. It appeared the rookie might be seizing the starting job for the regular season, weeks into his conversion from college safety to NFL cornerback.

“He did a really good job first time out. I was really proud of the way he played,” coach Pete Carroll said.

In the first quarter, Flowers got a pass-interference penalty for a Colts first down on third and 12 when he grabbed T.Y. Hilton’s arm well before the ball arrived. The receiver had turned in front of Flowers on an inside route. In the second quarter Flowers displayed the technique and awareness Carroll demands. The rookie “stayed on the top,” that is, ahead of and on the upfield shoulder of Colts receiver Deon Cain into the end zone on Cain’s go route down the left sideline. The pass sailed far past Flowers and Cain incomplete. That kept Indianapolis to a field goal instead of a touchdown.

The thing Carroll and his coaches preach more than anything else to Seahawks cornerback is “stay on top,” don’t get beat deep.

“Yes, it is. It is (a lesson) for any DB that plays in our system that you got to stay on top and you got to make sure that you’re secure before anything else can happen,” Carroll said. “But, we asked him to play on the line of scrimmage. So, it’s as difficult of a challenge that you can get. The conscious that he needs, and the awareness that he needs is demonstrated by consistency in staying on top. He’s done a really good job. He’s been on it. He gives himself a chance to compete, so I was really excited about that for him.”

Maxwell said of Flowers: “He’s tall. He’s long. And he’s physical. He’s going to be great in this league. He’s got an edge, he’s got a chippiness that every DB needs.

“He reminds me of Brandon Browner a little bit. He’s tall like him. Not as strong. But as far as his edge and playing through the whistle.”’

There’s irony there. Browner was the Seahawks’ starting cornerback in 2013, until the NFL suspended him late in that season for violating its substance-abuse policy. Maxwell replaced him as Seattle’s starter, including for that season’s playoffs and the team’s rout of Denver in Super Bowl 48.

Thursday, Maxwell returned to full participation in practice for the first time in more than a week. And Maxwell, not Flowers, took the first plays as the starting right cornerback in scrimmaging.

But a third entrant emerged this week. He’s a veteran who in some ways is swapping with Sherman. Or at least he hopes to be.

Dontae Johnson started all 16 games of last season at cornerback for the 49ers. Johnson, 26, is in Seattle now. This week he has been getting an increasing amount of work at right cornerback with the starting defense. Thursday he alternated first-team reps with Maxwell.

Now that the fast, athletic Johnson is back from a broken bone in his foot from early June that sidelined him for offseason workouts and the first two weeks of training camp, the Seahawks want to see how his experience playing both left and right cornerback over 63 games for San Francisco since 2014 may work for division-rival Seattle. Johnson has the size Carroll likes: 6-2 and 200 pounds.

“We’ve got a lot of depth back there, man,” Maxwell said. “It’s something close to how we had it in ’13. A guy went down, a guy was able to step up and fill in and be, not if better than, just as good as the other guy. That’s important in this league, because injuries are going to happen.”

Right now, Maxwell the mentor is also Maxwell the fighter. He is battling with Flowers and Johnson for his job, and perhaps his place on the 53-man roster. Seattle must set that on Sept. 1.

It’s not very likely the Seahawks keep all three right cornerbacks on the 53-man roster. Not with the Thomas surely rejoining the team at some point in the regular season. That will take up a roster spot in the secondary the All-Pro safety doesn’t currently own as a holdout on the reserve/did-not-report list.

Maxwell knows he can’t miss too many more days. That’s why he’d prefer to play Saturday’s preseason game, at the Los Angeles Chargers, instead of ease back from the hip injury. Thursday, he said he and the team were working out whether he will play Saturday.

Maxwell knows Seattle’s coaches will decide this competition based largely off Saturday’s game in Carson, Calif., plus the third preseason game next Friday, Aug. 24, at Minnesota.

“I’ve been hurt a full week, so right now it’s all about just getting back on the field so I can compete,” Maxwell said. “Availability is the best thing to happen. The best thing I can do is be out there, to give myself a shot.

“I would like to be out there (Saturday), if I can.”

This story was originally published August 16, 2018 at 4:35 PM.