At the NFL combine, Seahawks begin push to re-sign Jadeveon Clowney
John Schneider says the Seahawks’ effort to re-sign Jadeveon Clowney is beginning this week here at the NFL combine.
“Yeah, absolutely,” Seattle’s general manager said Tuesday inside the Indiana Convention Center.
“We will meet with his agent this week.”
Clowney, who just turned 27, is due to become an unrestricted free agent for the first time when the market opens March 18. The Seahawks almost desperately need to retain Clowney as the top sack man on a pass rush that finished next-to-last in the NFL in sacks last season.
Schneider and his chief contract negotiator, Matt Thomas, have between now and March 16 to give the three-time Pro Bowl defensive end an offer he wants. If he doesn’t get it by then, Clowney can begin talking to other teams. They are likely to give him at least $20 million per year in a market for pass rushers that has exploded the last two offseasons in the passer-and-sack-the-passer NFL.
Schneider made it clear Tuesday what the Seahawks’ chief need is this offseason.
“We need to improve our pass rush,” he said.
Schneider was asked on the first day of the league’s annual scouting combine what priority re-signing Clowney is to the Seahawks, who have an estimated $51.6 million in space under the projected league salary cap for 2020.
“Should we go through the priority of how it works. Want me to write it down for you? Would that be easier?” Schneider said, smiling and joking.
“It’s a landscape thing, right? Trying to figure out exactly...this time last year I thought Frank (Clark, their top sack man from 2018) was going be on our team, right?”
The Seahawks gave Clark the franchise tag to keep him from free agency this time last year. Schneider did not expect the Kansas City Chiefs to then offer Seattle a first- and a second-round draft choice plus Clark the $20 million-plus per season he was seeking. So the Seahawks traded him to the Chiefs last spring.
That necessitated the Seahawks’ trade with Houston for Clowney on Sept. 1, while he was finishing his contract.
“So it’s really like a daily and weekly process figuring out how we are going to put this thing together,” Schneider said Tuesday. “You know, we have some cap flexibility this year, which is great. But it’s not just about this year, too. It’s about planning for the future, next year and the following year, as well.
“We have to be cognizant of where we are going.”
He was asked if by March 16 Seattle does not have an agreement with Clowney would he ask the player and his agent to come back to the Seahawks with a chance to match a top offer he would then undoubtedly get from another team.
“Yeah,” Schneider said, “absolutely.”
Schneider met with Clowney in his office upstairs at Seahawks headquarters in Renton last month on locker clean-out day, the day after the team’s playoff loss at Green Bay. Clowney, according to coach Pete Carroll, reiterated his love for the Seahawks’ locker room, team and scheme.
“We had a great talk,” Schneider said Tuesday.
“Yeah, we’d love to have him back, obviously.”
Clowney had just three sacks last season, the fewest of his career except for his rookie season of 2014 with Houston when injuries limited him to just four games. He played on and off through December and in Seattle’s two playoff games in January with a sports-hernia injury. He missed three of the final five games of the regular season.
Schneider said he disregards Clowney’s sack number when assessing his 2019 Seahawks debut season.
“It doesn’t (factor) because he is so disruptive when he comes off the ball and is using his hands,” Schneider said. “He’s an incredible player, there is no doubt about it. Sack numbers-wise, he’s had really good...he had 8 1/2 sacks a couple years ago.
“He’s the exact, same player that he was in Houston.”
Schneider said Clowney had his sports-hernia surgery, as scheduled, and it went well.
That’s another factor in the Seahawks’ favor to re-sign him. They know his injury and recovery timetable better than any team that would sign him in free agency.
Another factor Schneider believes favors Seattle: CenturyLink Field. Specifically, the notorious noise from the always sold-out stadium with its cantilever roofs.
Schneider thinks there may a multi-layered home-field advantage to re-signing Clowney.
“Yeah, you’d like to think so. We know his body. We know how to take care of him,” Schneider said. “And then also, just the fact that just the stadium that we play in.
“One of the primary reasons we were able to recruit Michael Bennett and Cliff Avril (in free agency years ago) was their ability to jump off the ball in that stadium and playing there eight times. We lost four at home (in 2019); can’t be doing that again. But just to have that noise, those guys, the real good pass rushers know it and they have that snap anticipation.”
But, again, money ultimately will talk.
It always does.
This story was originally published February 25, 2020 at 11:03 AM.
