Trade deadline upon Seahawks. Pete Carroll wants more calls. Is Rashaad Penny available?
The trade deadline is upon the Seahawks, and everyone else in the NFL.
And Pete Carroll wants more phone calls.
Seattle’s coach has put out what seems like a plea for teams to make more offers ahead of Tuesday’s 1 p.m. deadline to deal.
“I don’t think it’s going to entertain me for as long as I’d like,” Carroll said Monday afternoon of the deadline. “It seems kind of quiet.
“As much as we’ve worked to get to this point to understand what’s available and what’s going on and people that are talking—like we say, we’re always in on it—I’m kind of hoping things start picking up a little bit.
“Just for fun.”
For far more than just fun. For need.
The Seahawks are a 6-2 team that has the multiple needs of a 3-5 one.
They lost their starting center for the season and maybe his Seattle tenure on Sunday during the win at Atlanta. Justin Britt, who’s been a Pro Bowl alternate at center for the Seahawks, needs reconstructive knee surgery to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his knee, Carroll said Monday.
Joey Hunt will replace Britt Sunday when the Seahawks host Tampa Bay (2-5). It will be his fourth career start. The Seahawks have no back-up center behind Hunt right now. Ethan Pocic is on injured reserve. He can’t return until the last few games of the regular season, if then.
On Tuesday, the Seahawks put Britt on injured reserve and promoted guard Jordan Roos from the practice squad to take Britt’s place on the 53-man roster. They had waived Roos last week to make roster room for adding safety Quandre Diggs in a trade from Detroit. When Roos cleared waivers Seattle signed him back to the practice squad late last week.
The pass rush remains an issue, perhaps the team’s biggest one. Seattle is 25th in the NFL with 13 sacks in eight games. They have three sacks in the last four games.
Two of those: Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson slipped in the open field at the line of scrimmage on wet turf while about to take off on a scramble in Seattle, and Atlanta’s Matt Schaub taking one of his only deep drops of last weekend’s game for a Hail Mary pass to end the first half.
So it’s really one legitimate sack during the run of normal play over the last month.
The pass rush remains this team’s potentially fatal flaw. Offenses are hurting the Seahawks with quick passes on shorter routes then longer runs after the catch with no affect on those throws by Seattle’s defensive front.
Schaub threw for 460 yards last weekend at age 38 in his first start in four years. Andy Dalton threw for 418 in the opener for the still-winless Bengals at Seattle. Jared Goff threw for 395 yards for the Rams against the Seahawks this month.
Yet Seattle won all three of those games.
Carroll knows that’s likely not sustainable for the playoffs.
“We need to try to get more aggressive and more of a factor on the intermediate stuff. That will come from our combination of ways to put pressure on a quarterback,” he said. “We have to get that going. That’s probably the biggest area that we would like to improve and see if we can continue to grow there.”
Jadeveon Clowney got the sack of Schaub at the end of the half last week. That gives the Pro Bowl defensive end Seattle acquired last month in a trade from Houston two sacks this season. That’s not going to get the Seahawks deep into the playoffs. And he knows that’s not going to get him paid the $20 million per year or so at the top of the free-agent market for pass rushers in March, after his contract ends with this season.
Clowney talked upon arriving to the team in early September about how much he will enjoy getting to play “vertically,” meaning straight-line rushes as an end off the edge against tackles to maximize his speed and athleticism outside. It may help his production if he did only that.
The Seahawks continue to move Clowney around the defensive line. Occasionally he’s a stand-up tackle on passing downs, roaming the middle before the snap to seek a gap or match-up he likes. In a few cases he, opposite end Ziggy Ansah, even tackle Jarran Reed since his return from a six-game NFL suspension have dropped into pass coverage in zone blitzes or change-up looks.
Yes, a team that needs more pressure on quarterbacks has a few times dropped their best pressure guys down the field in pass coverage.
Carroll seemed a little defensive at being asked Monday why his defense has been doing any of that.
“We don’t do it very often. It’s just that it’s a mixture thing. It’s a disguise thing.” he said. “It’s just part of the package and everybody does it at some time. That’s about all I’ll say about that.”
He said more about needing to pressure passers who are getting throws out quickly.
“I’d like us to hit more,” he said of opposing quarterbacks. “We’ve been doing a lot of stuff. We need to hit and be cleaner and execute better there to up our percentage. It’s all the stuff we’re working on.
“What I’d like to do is just be able to hit them a little more, make it hard on the offense with our rushes.”
Ansah has not yet been what the Seahawks bargained for when they signed the 2015 Pro Bowl end from Detroit for one year and up to $9 million this spring. He has one sack. He’s been inactive for three of the eight games. He had a groin injury in August coming back from shoulder surgery. Then he sprained his ankle in this month’s win at Cleveland.
Reed just played his second game since January. He had 10 1/2 sacks last year. End Quinton Jefferson has often been inside Clowney as a pass-rush tackle, and been the team’s most consistent pressure man so far this season—though that’s a low bar. Reed and Jefferson need to win the one-on-one matchups they get inside with offense’s attention and double-teams on Clowney outside.
First, Jefferson needs to get back on the field. He missed the Atlanta game with a strained oblique muscle in his torso.
“He’s better. We’re going to have to see how he goes through the week. We’re still working on that oblique thing that he had,” Carroll said. “They can’t predict yet what’s going to happen. So he’ll go light on Wednesday, and then we’ll see how he does in the later part of the week.”
The Seahawks also need a tight end.
Ed Dickson could be one. Carroll said last year’s starter at the position is returning from injured reserve this week to practice with the intent to play Sunday against the Buccaneers. Dickson had knee surgery in August.
Will Dissly’s season-ending Achilles tear this month has thinned tight end to Luke Willson and practice-squad call-up Jacob Hollister. Both are down-field receivers far more than blockers. Duane Brown returning last weekend to play left tackle again following two games out with a biceps injury allowed George Fant to go back to his blocking tight-end role on run downs.
Dickson was renowned as a blocking tight end for years with Carolina before signing with Seattle before last season.
“He’s going to go this week. We’re bringing Ed back in with the thought to give him a chance to practice with the chance to play,” Carroll said. “We’ve worked him really hard leading up to this time through his rehab and all. He’s been preparing for the workload. Very optimistic that he could, if he can make it through the week.
“We’re going to see how he handles the workload. We don’t know about that, of course. His mindset is on playing.”
Then there’s the case of Rashaad Penny.
Seattle’s first-round pick last year went from no carries and just two snaps the previous week against Baltimore to noticeably getting the ball on the sixth play of the Falcons game. He carried eight times in all, for 55 yards, as the Seahawks romped for 130 yards on the ground in the first half while taking a 24-0 lead.
Teams that know Penny is log-jammed behind Seahawks lead rusher Chris Carson have been calling the Seahawks asking about the availability of college football’s rushing leader from 2017. But trading Penny sounds like a plausible option only until Carson gets hurt again. Carson, with his punishing running style, hasn’t played a full season since back in junior college.
And Penny is just 1 1/2 seasons into his career. The Seahawks have him under rookie contract for 2 1/2 more seasons. He’s not nearly what he may become.
Carroll said of Penny from the Atlanta game: “He looked great. I thought he hit the line of scrimmage really hard, and was very productive.it was really good, it was really fast.”
This story was originally published October 29, 2019 at 8:38 AM.
