Good news for continuity. Bad news if you want big changes to the Seahawks’ offense
It’s good news if you like continuity.
It’s not-so-great news if you think the Seahawks need a massive overhaul of their offense, that they are wasting the prime years of Russell Wilson’s career with a run-first approach.
Pete Carroll wants his offensive line to be mostly the same next season.
“It is important. I hope we can keep our guys connected,” the veteran coach said heading into this offseason of inevitable change in Seattle and across the NFL.
”I don’t want to see a big change there.”
Seattle’s head man in personnel and decisions the last 10 seasons doesn’t want to switch up the unit he and general manager John Schneider built to block for the Seahawks’ foundational running game. More than for every-down pass blocking, that is. Wilson has been the most pressured quarterback in the league since 2012, on 42 percent of his dropbacks to pass. No one else has been harried even 40 percent of the time in that span.
But what Carroll wants may prove difficult to achieve.
Three veteran offensive linemen who started games this season are due to become free agents when the market opens March 18. They are Germain Ifedi, Mike Iupati and George Fant.
A fourth starter will be coming off reconstructive knee surgery. Center Justin Britt sustained a season-ending injury in October.
A fifth starting blocker, their best one, had knee surgery in December. Duane Brown will turn 35 before the 2020 season begins in September.
Brown wowed Carroll and teammates when he gutted through playing every snap in the Seahawks’ playoff loss at Green Bay Jan. 12. That was less than three weeks after his surgery, and after not practicing in almost a month.
After that game, Brown promised he’s playing next season.
“I love it, man. I love this atmosphere. I love this team,” Brown said.
“I’m looking forward to it, man. ...We’ve got a lot to build on.”
Brown has two more seasons and $18.75 million in base salaries for 2020 and 2021 remaining on his contract. That’s the extension he signed with the Seahawks in July 2018. At the time, Brown said he wanted to finish his career with Seattle.
This past season he missed five games, including the Seahawks’ wild-card playoff win at Philadelphia, while battling knee and biceps injuries. He had knee surgery Dec. 23.
His vow to return leaves Fant in need of a place. And, perhaps, a new team.
A place for Fant?
Fant, 27, is weeks away from what every football player lifts weights, runs sprints and bangs his head into foes for years back to junior high for: the first chance at the NFL’s real riches in free agency.
The former power forward at Western Kentucky has started at right tackle and left tackle since Seattle took him out of college basketball and made him an NFL first-teamer as an undrafted rookie in 2016. He was going to be the Seahawks’ starting left tackle to begin the 2017. Then he tore knee ligaments in a preseason game.
Fant’s season-ending knee surgery is why the Seahawks traded to get Brown from Houston in the middle of that 2017 season. They re-signed Brown the following summer.
Since returning from that injury in August 2018, Fant primarily has been the sixth, run-blocking tight end as a situational player on Seattle’s offensive line the last two seasons. That was particularly after number-one tight end Will Dissly’s season-ending injuries in September 2018 and October 2019.
Fant started for Brown at left tackle to end the regular season then in Seattle’s wild-card playoff win at Philadelphia Jan. 5. That was while Brown was recovering from his surgery.
“Being able to showcase that was huge for me,” Fant said. “Showed that I am a starter.”
Huge in more ways than one. Left tackles are the most valued blockers in free agency and in the pass-happy NFL, far more so than right tackles. Left tackles protect the back, “blind” side of most quarterbacks, who are predominantly right-handed.
On his way out of the locker room on clean-out day two weeks ago following the Seahawks’ loss at Green Bay, Fant was asked what he’s looking forward to most this offseason.
“To become a starter,” he said. “To have the opportunity to be a starter. That’s the main thing.”
Does Fant feel like that chance for him is coming in Seattle?
“I don’t know,” he said. “We’ll see.
“You know, things change. ...I’ve done all I can do, so, that’s about it.”
As he began walking out of the locker room, he was asked: a starter at right tackle, or left?
“Left tackle,” he said, clearly and with a point.
That would be opposite a vacancy the Seahawks may soon have.
Ifedi’s iffy future
Right tackle Ifedi’s rookie contract ended with the loss in Green Bay. Last spring, the team that drafted him in the first round in 2016 and patiently played him through extended problems with penalties, pass protection and fighting with teammates early in his career declined to pick up his possible fifth-year option for 2020. That option would have cost the Seahawks $10.35 million guaranteed this year.
Tackles with four years experience starting in the NFL often get paid handsomely on the open market. But Ifedi’s up-and-down career so far makes him an interesting case in free agency, which the Seahawks appear ready to let him test. That is barring a deal between now and mid-March for Ifedi that would be more salary-cap friendly to the Seahawks than the $10 million they’ve already refused to commit to him.
If Ifedi leaves, Fant could be Seattle’s starting right tackle with experience for 2020. Fant could then become the Seahawks’ starter at left tackle for 2021 and beyond.
Brown will be 36 by then. His contract runs through the 2021 season. It is heavily back-loaded as most of the team’s bigger deals are; Seattle could save $11 million against its 2021 cap by releasing Brown or Brown retiring before that season.
Nothing so far suggests any of that will happen. Yet it’s a possibility that could keep Fant in Seattle longer term.
What about Britt?
He was in the Seahawks’ locker room often in December into January, including on clean-out day two weeks ago. Britt had reconstructive knee surgery to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament he got early in Seattle’s win at Atlanta in October.
“He said he is making really good progress,” Carroll said. “He’s been around a lot. He’s very active in here, so we know that he’s working hard at it. He should be able to get back on normal schedule.”
The team’s second-round draft choice in 2014 has started at right tackle, right guard and center and in a Super Bowl for the Seahawks.
Britt’s three-year, $27 million contract extension he signed in 2017 after the ‘20 season, thanks to the team picking up his option for next season in the spring of 2018. Britt’s salary-cap charges also balloon in the final year, back-loaded to be more cap friendly up front at the start of the deal.
The Seahawks could save $8.75 million against their cap this coming year by releasing the 28-year-old who has been a Pro Bowl alternate for them at center. That was after he failed at tackle then at guard his first two seasons with the team. Britt’s $11.67 million cap charge is scheduled to be the fourth-highest on the team in 2020. That’s behind only Wilson, Bobby Wagner and Brown, and ahead of top wide receiver Tyler Lockett.
That’s a hefty chunk of the team’s salary cap to a veteran who will be 29 and maybe not on the field until September, as or after next season begins. Recoveries from reconstructive knee surgeries generally take nine to 12 months or so. Players usually don’t come back from them immediately as the same performers they were prior to the injury.
It’s the same situation the Seahawks had with Richard Sherman following his torn Achilles in Nov. 2017. Rather than absorb his $11 million salary-cap charge for 2018, Seattle released its All-Pro cornerback and previous team cornerstone in the spring of ‘18. That was weeks before his 30th birthday.
Sherman is now finishing his second season playing for NFC West-rival San Francisco. He is playing in this weekend’s Super Bowl.
Carroll was vague in discussing what’s next for Britt.
“After you get about five or six months into it, you have to kind of figure out what’s going on,” the coach said. “So, I don’t know how that’s going to turn for him.”
Backup Joey Hunt started the final 10 games of this past season following Britt’s injury. At 6 feet 1 and 299 pounds Hunt’s somewhat undersized against many defensive linemen he must pass block. He got overwhelmed by them at times this past season.
Hunt, Seattle’s sixth-round pick in 2016, is a restricted free agent. The team has until March 18 to tender him a contract offer for 2020. Another team could match that. If the Seahawks decline to tender Hunt an offer he would become an unrestricted free agent.
Iupati turns 33 in May. He missed both playoff games to end his Seattle debut season because of a nerve issue in his neck.
Younger options
The Seahawks drafted Phil Haynes in the fourth-round last spring to play guard. Haynes missed the first two months of his rookie season after sports-hernia surgery. That essentially made 2019 a redshirt year for him. But he played in the playoff win at Philadelphia this month.
Haynes seems likely to replace Iupati at left guard. Jamarco Jones did that in two playoff starts. But the Seahawks drafted Jones in 2018 to play tackle. This past season was the first time he’d ever played guard.
“What we’ve seen in Phil is that he’s really strong and he plays real square. He did it in that game. He did very well,” Carroll said. “Was really pleased to see him. He has had such little play time since he’s been here. It was great to see him do well.”
Seattle could save $3 million by releasing starting right guard D.J. Fluker, who has missed six and two games in his first two seasons with the team because of assorted injuries. But the Seahawks have more than $59 million in cap space right now. It’s the best financial shape they have been in to begin an offseason in years. This shouldn’t be the time to pinch a couple million dollars—or a starter on a line Carroll says he wants to keep mostly intact.
Plus, the 28-year-old Fluker is popular in a locker room that isn’t overflowing anymore with veterans who have been here multiple years.
The Seahawks also have younger blockers pushing for their chances. Seattle has drafted seven offensive linemen in the last four years, beginning with Ifedi and ending with Haynes. The team had three offensive linemen end the 2019 season on injured reserve: guards Jordan Simmons, Demetrius Knox and Ethan Pocic.
So the offensive line may not look the same in 2020, despite Carroll’s wishes.
“We have made good progress,” Carroll said. “We have really good young guys, a couple guys got banged up this year that you haven’t seen a whole lot: Jordan Simmons, Knox, those guys coming back, the competition will really be good. Jamarco did well. To see Phil play like that, too, that was really, really helpful for us going forward.
“I think the whole group could be a really solid group coming back. I would like to see the guys who have been playing for us to stay with us.”
This story was originally published January 29, 2020 at 7:18 AM.
