The Jadeveon Clowney Watch, the coronavirus and potential domino effects on Seahawks draft
Jadeveon Clowney is like all of us right now.
He’s waiting.
The three-time Pro Bowl pass rusher is waiting on the coronavirus pandemic to subside, at least enough to travel. He is waiting to get a physical exam and thus perhaps a richer offer from another team.
He is waiting to decide where to sign, largely because he can. All the way into summer, if he chooses.
The COVID-19 virus has shut down NFL team facilities. The crisis has halted free agents traveling to team doctors for first-hand physical examinations. Offseason minicamp and organized team activities in May and June are on hold. As the last top free agent left on the dwindling market that began almost a month ago, Clowney can wait to prove his health following sports-hernia surgery in January until the league’s offseason travel restrictions to ease.
But the Seahawks can’t wait. They’ve got a draft to conduct in three weeks.
As March turns to April the NFL remains the only major sports league in the world operating as semi-normal. Free agency went on as scheduled. The Seahawks offered a multi-year contract believed to be worth $18.5 million to re-sign Clowney. But their top offseason priority still wants more money, apparently $20 million or more per year. Last week commissioner Roger Goodell told teams in a memo the draft will happen on time April 23-25, albeit in an appropriately toned-down, remote manner.
Each day that passes increases the likelihood Clowney ultimately decides re-signing with Seattle is his best option. That’s either at the $18.5 million per season in the multiyear deal the team offered him weeks ago, or less (perhaps $14-15 million) on a one-year deal. That would put Clowney back on the free-agent market in 2021. He would be betting on himself, in that scenario, on a dominant, injury-free 2020.
But he’s had only one of his six NFL seasons free from injury and missed games.
Yet each day that passes without Clowney resolved is creating more of a multidimensional dilemma for the Seahawks.
They expected to have already addressed in free agency coach Pete Carroll’s stated top offseason goal of improving the pass rush. They thought they’d either have re-signed Clowney, or failing that, signed a remaining available sack man such as former Vikings captain Everson Griffen.
The wait on Clowney is holding up the Seahawks’ decisions on how much salary-cap space they may need to clear to boost the pass rush. Seattle has an estimated $11.3 million in cap room, according to overthecap.com. That doesn’t count the money they will pay wide receiver Phillip Dorsett; the Seahawks made his one-year deal official on Monday.
That $11.3 million in cap space doesn’t count the $6 million or so they will need for the seven draft picks they currently have, nor the $2 million they will need for a practice squad during the season, nor the possibility of signing more lower-cost free agents.
Where to find room
With or without Clowney returning, which veterans will the Seahawks need to release to create cap room? Is releasing benched safety Tedric Thompson ($2.13 million savings against the cap), as they are reportedly going to do, enough? Him plus cutting oft-injured, 32-year-old tight end Ed Dickson to clear $3 million?
What about center Justin Britt? The Seahawks could save $8.75 million against next year’s cap by releasing him. Yet he’s been a steady force on the iffy offensive line, a trusted protection caller with quarterback Russell Wilson just before snaps. He’s been Pro Bowl alternate for them at center after he failed at tackle then at guard his first two seasons with the team.
But Britt’s $11.67 million cap charge is scheduled to be the fourth-highest on the team in 2020. That’s behind only franchise pillars Wilson and Bobby Wagner then Pro Bowl left tackle Duane 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 likely not on the field until September or October, after next season begins. Recoveries from reconstructive knee surgeries generally take 12 months or so, and players usually don’t come back from it immediately as the same performers they were prior to the injury. Not right away.
Britt seems too valuable to release. But he could be getting a call from the only NFL team he’s known asking him to restructure his deal into one with a more team-friendly cap charge for 2020. Same is true of Wilson’s ($31 million) or Bobby Wagner’s ($14.75 million) cap charges; the Seahawks could convert some of their hefty salaries to bonus money this year for a better cap charge in 2020—at the price of additional cap charges in 2021 and beyond. Wilson did that a couple years ago to make room for Brown’s new deal.
Thing is, the Seahawks don’t truly know how much if any of Britt’s (or anyone else’s) cap space they may need before the draft. That depends on Clowney and/or Griffen.
And just re-signing Clowney is not going to be enough. If he does return, the Seahawks still need to add further to the pass rush. With Clowney healthy into mid-November before his sports-hernia injury and eventual surgery in January, Seattle still had the second-worst sack production in the league in 2019. Only Miami produced fewer than the Seahawks’ 28 sacks in 16 games during last regular season.
Clowney is Plan A. The apparent backup Plan B in free agency could be the next attractive remaining pass rusher still out on the market. That’s Griffen, who played for Carroll at USC. But there are reasons Griffen’s still available. He’s 32. He’s a year and a half removed from a mental breakdown that had his career in jeopardy.
Plan C would then be exploring the viability of trading for one of the league franchise-tagged edge rushers, such as Jacksonville’s Yannick Ngakoue or Baltimore’s Matt Judon. It’s Plan C because general manager John Schneider hates trading top draft choices. He loves stockpiling them through trades instead.
The Jaguars have fielded “multiple” trade offers for Ngakoue, NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo reported Tuesday. “The Jags value him and won’t give him away for little return,” Garafolo wrote.
Ngakoue reiterated his desire to get out of Jacksonville with a Twitter post on Tuesday: “Let’s agree to disagree . Why hold a man from taking care of his family. It’s obvious my time is up in my current situation. Let’s both move on @Jaguars”
He ended that with an emoji of a checkered flag, to signify the finish line with his team.
Any franchise-tagged defensive end would be playing at a guaranteed salary-cap charge of $17,788,000 for 2020, and be eligible to leave as a free agent this time next year. That is, unless a team acquiring that tagged pass rusher strikes a new, rich, multiyear deal with him. That’s what Kansas City did while trading first- and second-round picks to Seattle last spring for Frank Clark.
What about drafting?
Oh, yeah, there’s also this draft.
The Seahawks had expected to know by now what their veteran pass rushers looked like for 2020, and what else they may need in the draft for immediate help. That is, at the top of the draft.
Right now all they know is Quinton Jefferson, one of their lone consistent disruptors on the defensive line last season, is gone. He signed with Buffalo. The Seahawks signed back Bruce Irvin, their former first-round pick and Super Bowl linebacker who had 8 1/2 sacks last season for Carolina. He turns 33 in November. That’s why he was available for one year in the in secondary wave of free agency two weeks ago.
And that’s it.
Seattle’s pass rush has not improved, not nearly enough for the Seahawks to contend for a Super Bowl in the 2020 season.
So the question now for Carroll, Schneider and their scouting and personnel staffs is: how many assets from the top of the draft should we devote to the pass rush?
The Seahawks currently own seven picks in the draft. Six of those are in the first four rounds. The other selection is in round six.
Seattle holds the 27th-overall choice in the first round. The Clowney Watch is likely to at least giving Schneider and Carroll pause to their routine of trading down. They have traded their first-round pick from eight consecutive drafts. But if they haven’t re-signed Clowney, and if waiting to causes them to miss out on Griffen, the Seahawks should at least be discussing the merits of using that 27th-overall pick, and on a pass rusher.
That has been a treacherous proposition lately for Seattle.
Schneider and Carroll are still feeling the compounding effects of Malik McDowell’s mysterious ATV accident, his head injuries from it and his spiral out of the NFL without playing a game in the NFL as the Seahawks’ top pick in 2017. If McDowell was what they thought he’d be, they likely would not have picked inside pass rusher L.J. Collier with their top choice after trading down to begin last year’s draft. Collier sustained a rare foot-ankle sprain early in training camp. He missed basically all of his preseason development time. He was a healthy scratch for five games last regular season. The team’s top rookie draft choice had as many sacks as you did for Seattle in 2019.
Would the Seahawks dare go pass rusher with their top pick for the third time in four drafts?
The way the Clowney situation is going, they may need to. But the top sack guys coming out of college—including Chase Young of Ohio State and K’Lavon Chaisson from LSU—will be long gone by Seattle’s current turn to pick at 27.
Schneider trading up in the first round to get into the derby for the best pass rushers in this draft? Now that would be show the Seahawks mean serious business about fixing their pass rush. It would be counter to Schneider’s and Carroll’s decade running the franchise.
Another pandemic factor
Here’s yet another aspect of the delay with Clowney that is sub-optimal for Seattle: This is the wrong year to change draft priorities in the final days and weeks before it.
The pandemic has wiped out all pre-draft travel, by teams to pro days and by prospects to teams for 30 pre-draft interviews per squads. So teams are having only what they scouted and investigated on campuses during the previous college seasons and what they did at last month’s scouting combine in Indianapolis as their first-person evaluations.
The Seahawks’ scouting staff prides itself on how well they’ve studied and know the entire draft board. But not having their top pass-rush priorities done by the draft is not the context they worked under at the combine.
Then again, nothing has gone according to form this spring inside the Seahawks franchise, in the NFL—or in life.
This story was originally published March 31, 2020 at 6:33 AM.
