Seahawks wide receiver Doug Baldwin makes a one-handed catch over Chiefs defensive back Charvarius Ward in the final minutes of Seattle’s home win in December. Baldwin, 30, has had multiple surgeries since the end of the season, Seahawks general manager John Schneider told The News Tribune Wednesday at the NFL combine in Indianapolis.
Joshua Bessex
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INDIANAPOLIS
First, it was a bad knee.
That sent Doug Baldwin away for what his coach called “special treatment.” It kept him out all last training camp, plus two of the Seahawks’ first three games of 2018. Those were the first games he’d missed in 6 1/2 years.
Then, it was pain in the other knee.
He had a nagging shoulder injury. In November, he got a pulled groin. He played through that—then got another groin injury. His team was listing as an issue with his hip.
By that point, hip, groin, what did it matter?
He ended missing three games in 2018, and playing hurt through most the other 14.
So on Wednesday I asked Seahawks general manager John Schneider at the start of the NFL’s annual scouting combine in Indianapolis if Baldwin had surgery.
Schneider looked at me with an incredulous expression that said “ya think?”
“Yeah, he had surgery. He had a bunch of different stuff,” Schneider told The News Tribune off the podium inside an exhibit hall of the Indiana Convention Center.
“I’m not going to tell exactly what. But he had surgeries.”
Plural.
Baldwin, 30, was Seattle’s Pro Bowl wide receiver in 2016 and ‘17 before the first injury-filled season of his eight years in the NFL with the Seahawks.
Schneider said Baldwin is on track to be ready for the start of the 2019 season.
“I mean, he’s been in the building rehabbing,” the GM said. “So, yeah.”
Through the injuries last season, Baldwin had seven catches for 126 yards and a touchdown in Seattle’s upset of eventual AFC finalist Kansas City in mid-December. That performance clinched the Seahawks’ sixth playoff appearance in seven years. It also signaled to the veteran and to his team he remains the top target for quarterback Russell Wilson.
When he’s healthy.
Last season’s unending pain had Baldwin contemplating his career mortality.
Whenever he recovers from his surgeries and rehabilitation, Baldwin is likely to be the longest tenured Seahawk. He and K.J. Wright shared that distinction in 2018.
Now Wright is about to enter free agency. The market opens March 13. The Seahawks have yet to make the 29-year-old linebacker an offer that will keep him from shopping, months after he finished his own injury setbacks including knee surgery in August.
Asked about Wright’s chances of re-signing with Seattle, Schneider said Wednesday: “We sit down with all of our unrestricted guys and talk to them. We have a personal talk before they get to free agency, so they know what’s shaking,” Schneider said. “We’ll meet with all of their representatives down here (in Indianapolis). So by the end of the week we’ll have a better feel for where his market lies.”
“He’s been incredible for us. He had a rough year with a knee injury, but when he played, he was phenomenal. We love him.”
They love Baldwin, too.
In November he played through a groin pull that had coach Pete Carroll marveling how Baldwin could walk, let alone catch five passes in a key road win at Carolina. The Seahawks’ locker room that Sunday in Charlotte, N.C., was a mad house of chanting and players dancing over blaring rap music. Yet Baldwin sat pushed back into his locker stall, talking in relatively hushed tones and looking subdued if not completely spent.
The games he was out because of his knees, week two’s loss at Chicago in September 2018 then the win the next week over Dallas, were the first games he’d missed since 2012. That was in his second NFL season after Seattle signed him as an undrafted free agent from Stanford. His streak of 102 consecutive games played, regular season and playoffs, ended Sept. 17 when he was inactive for the loss to the Bears.
He was on a team injury report missing practice time each week last season season, except the one following the team’s bye in October. That after the win over Oakland in London, and before he had two catches in the victory at Detroit after the bye.
Baldwin finished with 50 receptions for 618 yards and five touchdowns in 2018 inside Seattle’s run-first offense that led the league in rushing. It was his second-fewest catches for a season of his career, after 29 in 2012. He scored five touchdowns, his fewest in six seasons. In 2015 he co-led the league with 14 touchdown receptions.
He has two years and $19.5 million in salary remaining on his contract. Of course, that money is not guaranteed. Few things in the NFL are.
His current deal is from the $46 million extension he signed in the summer of 2016, a year removed from Seattle’s second consecutive Super Bowl. He was still in his prime then, still in his 20s.
Not anymore.
“Oh, I am on the downside of my career. I’m 30 years old,” Baldwin said in December.
“I would not be able to play at the caliber I’m playing now at 38,” he joked.
Asked in December if he thinks about his future, whether he will be a Seahawk in 2019 with this team in such a successful youth movement, Baldwin chuckled.
“I do,” he said.
“But if you know me, you know I always have a plan. ...If you know me, you know I’ve got a plan for everything.
“The method to the madness.”
This story was originally published February 27, 2019 at 1:51 PM.
Gregg Bell is the Seahawks and NFL writer for The News Tribune. He is a two-time Washington state sportswriter of the year, voted by the National Sports Media Association in January 2023 and January 2019. He started covering the NFL in 2002 as the Oakland Raiders beat writer for The Sacramento Bee. The Ohio native began covering the Seahawks in their first Super Bowl season of 2005. In a prior life he graduated from West Point and served as a tactical intelligence officer in the U.S. Army, so he may ask you to drop and give him 10.Support my work with a digital subscription
