How NFL’s key offseason dates relate to Seahawks, who have the means to fill their needs
The Super Bowl, and thus the NFL season, is over.
But the Seahawks’ work for next season is already starting.
The offseason kicked off this week with the start of the league’s waiver system for 2020.
‘Tis is also the season for negotiating with free agents. Seattle has 19 of them, headlined by Jadeveon Clowney and Jarran Reeed. Those veterans with expiring contracts are scheduled to become free agents March 18, the day the league year begins.
The Seahawks are also lining up meetings with free agents from other clubs. They are going to meet with three-time Pro Bowl tight end Greg Olsen, per a report Tuesday by ESPN’s Adam Schefter.
The rebuilding Panthers announced last week they were parting with Olsen after his nine seasons and 718 receptions with 59 touchdowns in Carolina.
Seattle believes it has a special tight end in Will Dissly. But the former University of Washington defensive lineman will be returning from his second season-ending injury in as many years in the league. Dissly ruptured his Achilles tendon in mid-October during the Seahawks’ win at Cleveland.
The team isn’t certain Dissly will be ready for the start of training camp in late July.
“He’s killing it. He’s killing the rehab. Will is doing great,” coach Pete Carroll said three weeks ago. “He’s spending some time down in L.A. to get right, and he’s really fired up about the people that he’s working with and the progress he’s making.
“He’s been around a lot. He’ll get it done. Will will get it done. There’s no question he will.
“But, it’s a long process. It’s going to be some tough work for him.”
The Seahawks are likely to release tight end Ed Dickson this offseason to save $3.25 million in space against their 2020 salary cap. The 32-year-old Dickson has been hurt in both seasons since Seattle signed him from Carolina to a three-year, $10.7 million deal to replace departed Jimmy Graham as the No. 1 tight end.
Dickson missed all of last season following knee surgery in the summer. He was one of the team’s two players it designated to return from injured reserve.
He did, in November. But after one practice he went back on IR for the remainder of the 2019 season.
Dissly’s and Dickson’s injuries forced Seattle to sign Luke Willson off the street in the middle of this past season and put Jacob Hollister into a far more prominent role than the Seahawks wanted.
Put it this way: Seattle absolutely did not plan for Hollister to come off the practice squad to be the guy to whom Russell Wilson threw on the final offensive play of the NFC West title game.
San Francisco linebacker Dre Greenlaw stopped the light-ish, 240-pound Hollister short of the goal line. The Seahawks fell from the division title and home playoff game to a wild card on the road for the playoffs. And the 49ers rode the conference’s top seed into last weekend’s Super Bowl.
So, yes, Seattle needs another tight end.
More needs
Look for the Seahawks to also shop for a cornerback to challenge Tre Flowers. He struggled in his second season while being targeted repeatedly opposite Pro Bowl corner Shaquill Griffin. That likely will be through the draft and at the league’s scouting combine for it that begins Feb. 24 in Indianapolis.
The Seahawks have had little success signing veteran free-agent cornerbacks who can effectively learn Carroll’s unique step-kick technique of defending receivers off the line of scrimmage.
Or have you forgotten Cary Williams?
While Carroll, general manager John Schneider and the Seahawks’ coaches and scouting staffs are at the combine, Feb. 25 is the start of two-week window for teams to place franchise and transition tags on players with expiring contracts.
Seattle put the franchise tag on Frank Clark this time last year to keep him from leaving in free agency then traded its top sack man to Kansas City. That was the first time the Seahawks had used the franchise tag since 2010, in Carroll’s and Schenider’s first months leading the franchise.
They aren’t likely to do it again this offseason.
The Clowney situation
They again have their top pass rusher with an expiring contract scheduled for free agency, Clowney. But Carroll and Schneider agreed when they traded with Houston to get him Sept. 1 not to use their 2020 franchise tag on the three-time Pro Bowl defensive end. The Texans did that in 2019 to keep Clowney from free agency.
The Seahawks have what is essentially a gentlemen’s, handshake agreement with Clowney not to franchise him. It’s not contractual. But breaking it would be an awful precedent. It would poison Seattle’s reputation as a place free agents want to go. It would be counter all the players-first environment that Carroll and Schneider have built in their decade leading the team.
So the deadline to tag players of March 10 will pass, and the Seahawks will either give Clowney something near the $20 million per year he is seeking or the Seahawks will lose their top sack man for a needy pass rush that was the key reason Seattle fell short of the Super Bowl this past season.
That would be a damaging blow for 2020. Miami was the only team with fewer sacks in 2019 than the Seahawks’ 28. Improving the pass rush is Seattle’s key to improving the pass coverage in the secondary, the entire defense and thus winning the division and getting home playoff games, for a change.
The Seahawks essentially have until March 16 to make their best offer to Clowney. On that date, free agents can begin negotiating with teams other than the one for which they played last season. That 48-hour negotiating window goes up to the start of free agency on March 18.
Other key dates
March 18 is the deadline for teams to tender contract offers for 2020 to its restricted free agents. The Seahawks have five: Hollister, defensive end Branden Jackson, wide receiver David Moore, center Joey Hunt and defensive back Kalan Reed.
Other teams can match the Seahawks’ qualifying offers to any of those restricted free agents. If the Seahawks decline to tender any of them by March 18, they become unrestricted free agents available to sign with any team.
March 18 is the start of the NFL trading period for this year.
It is also the day teams must have their top 51 contracts under the 2020 salary cap. The league is expected to set it at or around $200 million.
Three factors are in the Seahawks’ favor to re-sign Clowney:
1. They have the salary-cap space to do it.
2. He loves it in Seattle, and went up to Schneider’s office on locker clean-out day last month to tell him that.
3. No NFL team knows the intricacies of Clowney’s core-muscle injury, the surgery he was to have last month and what he must do to recover from it better than the Seahawks.
What they pay (or ultimately don’t pay) Clowney will determine what they do with other pending free agents, such as Reed, their 10 1/2-sack defensive tackle two seasons ago, offensive tackles Germain Ifedi and George Fant, plus others.
The Seahawks are in better cap shape than they’ve been in many offseasons, with about $59 million to spend. Yet look for Carroll and Schneider to do what they always do: wait out the first, frenzied days of free agency. Let other teams desperately sign top veterans for Monopoly money.
If their last decade is any indication, expect the Seahawks to sign second-tier free agents, particularly for the offensive and defensive lines, to more cost-effective, short-term deals beginning around March 20. That will be especially true if they spend to re-sign Clowney.
The league’s annual league meetings are March 29-April 1 in Palm Beach, Fla. Look for tweaks to the NFL’s maligned replay-review system for on-field calls by officials, particularly the pass-interference reviews that became a mess in its debut season of 2019.
Restricted free agents must sign their tender offers by April 17.
The Seahawks begin their official offseason workout program of weight lifting and rehabilitating from injuries in the training rooms at team headquarters April 20.
The draft is April 23-25 in Las Vegas. Seattle is expected to have a total of eight picks, including three compensatory choices the NFL is expected to award the Seahawks for a net loss of three free agents the previous year.
Seattle has a first-round pick, two in the second round (the extra one from the Chiefs as part of the Clark trade), an expected comp pick at the end of round three, a fourth-round pick and a fifth-round selection.
As Eric Branch of the San Francisco Chronicle reminded on Tuesday, the Seahawks are better positioned right now than the NFC-champion 49ers for this offseason.
The Seahawks won at San Francisco then came within half a yard of sweeping the division and conference champs in 2019. Whether Seattle’s cap-space and draft-pick advantage is enough to catch the 49ers in 2020 will depend on whether the Seahawks keep Clowney, further upgrade their pass rush—and use those draft picks effectively.
“We come back with new resolve and stepping forward knowing where we’ve come from and knowing what we have,” Carroll said, “and building on the nucleus of the group that we put together here.”
This story was originally published February 5, 2020 at 8:01 AM.
