Seahawks GM, on Jadeveon Clowney: ‘The door’s not closed’
The Seahawks are keeping their doors open to re-signing Jadeveon Clowney.
Meanwhile, their coach thinks the three-time Pro Bowl edge rusher is in no hurry to walk through them, or into any deal. From any team.
Days before a draft Seattle thought they’d begin with the Clowney issue settled—him being re-signed or signed elsewhere—Clowney remains unsigned. He remains unable because of the coronavirus pandemic to travel to physical examinations to prove himself healthy to other teams that he’s worthy of the big money he’s seeking.
And the Seahawks remain on hold about the centerpiece to their effort to bolster their most problematic area of the team: the pass rush.
Seattle has in the last month brought back its former first-round pick Bruce Irvin and 2013 Seahawks defensive end Benson Mayowa on low-risk, short-term deals. Those veterans combined for 15 1/2 sacks last season for Carolina and Oakland, respectively. But they are stopgaps.
The big prize is one general manager John Schneider and coach Pete Carroll said they are still in play to get, after they offered what is believed to be a three- or four-year deal for as much as $18.5 million last month.
Clowney, 27, had been seeking $20 million or more per year in his first career shot in free agency. News leaked that he recently dropped his asking price to $17-18 million per year.
“We made an effort to re-sign him. We still...you know, the door’s not closed,” Schneider said of Clowney Tuesday, via a Zoom call from his home in the Seattle suburbs.
“But we couldn’t wait any longer. We had to conduct (the rest of the team’s free-agent) business. He knew that. Everything was very cordial. He’s a great guy. Represented by a great guy. I go all the way back to Brett Favre with his representative, Bus Cook (when Schneider was an executive with Green Bay more than a decade ago). We’ve had great conversations.
“He’s just going to kind of feel his way through this odd process. And, we’ll see where that goes.”
This odd process is the combination of the NFL prohibiting free agents from traveling during the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S. plus Clowney’s surgery in January to repair a sports hernia. That injury kept him sidelined for three of Seattle’s final five regular-season games in 2019. He played through core pain in both of the Seahawks’ playoff games in January.
Other teams want to examine Clowney with their own doctors before offering anything close to the money Clowney is seeking.
Five weeks into free agency Clowney is down to two options: waiting for travel restrictions to ease so he can travel to teams and take the physicals in hopes of attracting more lucrative offers; or taking a one-year deal. That would allow him to re-try free agency next year at the still-prime age of 28. Then, presumably, he won’t be coming off a surgery—and society won’t be in a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.
If he chooses a one-year deal, it’s going to come at perhaps $13 million instead of $17-18 million per year. Teams can’t spread salary-cap hits over multiple year to more club-friendly numbers on a one-year deal.
Seattle becomes a logical place to return for that one season. The NFL basically canceling its offseason minicamps and on-field work would limit the amount of acclimation time Clowney would have to begin a prove-it season with a new team. Coming back to the one most familiar to him, the one he told Schneider in January he wants to stay with, would be a logical place for a do-over season in 2020.
“As John said, we are wide open in battling and we’ll take on all the opportunities that show up,” Carroll said Tuesday, from his home via Zoom. “We’ll see if Clowney comes back around again. We don’t know. We’ll find out in time.
“Fortunately, it’s been handled really well. So there’s an ongoing to that. So we’ll see where he is when he’s ready to make a decision.
“Things have changed a little bit. Guys haven’t been able to travel around and get to places and stuff like that. So there is a number of guys that have taken the, ‘I’m going to wait and see what happens. We’ve got some time here.’
“It seems like that’s what JD’s done.”
Only adding Irvin, who turns 33 in November, and Mayowa, 29 in August, is almost certainly not the Seahawks’ plan to improve the pass rush enough to finally get home playoff games again and thus a realistic shot at advancing back to their first Super Bowl since the 2014 season. Only Miami had fewest sacks in the NFL last season than the Seahawks’ 28 in 16 games.
Not that Schneider made Irvin and Mayowa sound useless. The GM also mentioned defensive end L.J. Collier. The team’s first-round pick last year got a rare, high-foot-and-ankle sprain early in training camp, was slow coming back then when recovered was a healthy scratch for five games.
“Two individuals that we are very comfortable with, confident in. They bring 15 (1/2) sacks (from last year). We are excited about having those guys back,” Schneider said of Irvin and Mayowa.
“L.J. will have a year under his belt. Hopefully we can keep him healthy. He got hurt last year, and we thought we were going to lose him for the whole season the day he went down. So, it was very disappointing, but we were able to get him back at a certain time, in a season that just wasn’t ideal from a developmental standpoint.
“Yeah, pass rush is always something that we are focused on. Obviously, we need to do a better job in that regard. And that’s from an acquisition standpoint, a developmental standpoint, and a schematic standpoint.”
This story was originally published April 21, 2020 at 6:50 PM.
