Seahawks assess their biggest issue, draft two pass rushers. What about Jadeveon Clowney?
The Seahawks added two more pass rushers in this weekend’s draft.
Second-round pick Darrell Taylor and fifth-round choice Alton Robinson are going right into the rotation for significant playing time, whenever players get back on the field.
Is that enough to fix this team’s biggest problem?
Pete Carroll says yes.
The coach says even without still-unsigned Jadeveon Clowney, the Seahawks have enough guys to pressure opposing quarterbacks.
“Pretty fired up about it, really,” Carroll said Saturday night.
But even Seattle’s sun-on-a-rainy-day coach acknowledges how he feels in April means nothing for the next season if the players don’t perform better than they did in the last one.
The Seahawks’ chances to reach the Super Bowl depend on it.
“We really did look at the issue of we weren’t happy with the production of our pressure that we put on last year. And so we went after it,” Carroll said after the Seahawks selected the two rush ends plus Texas Tech linebacker Jordyn Brooks with their first-round pick Thursday among their eight picks in the 2020 NFL draft.
“We’ve addressed an issue and now we have to make it come to life. It doesn’t mean anything except, how does it work?” Carroll said.
“We have really clear intentions.”
Those intentions began in earnest more than a month ago with the team’s multiyear contract offer to Clowney. It was believed to be for four years at up to $18.5 million per year.
But the former first-overall pick in the draft and three-time Pro Bowl pass rusher was seeking $20 million or more per year in his first chance at free agency.
So he remains unsigned. No team wants to pay Clowney what wants, not after surgery in January to repair a sports hernia that kept him out of three of Seattle’s final five regular-season games in 2019. He played both of the Seahawks’ playoff games injured. The shuttering of team headquarters and the league prohibiting free agents from traveling have kept Clowney from being able to go to doctors of other teams to take physical exams.
Seattle general manager John Schneider said this week “the door’s not closed” on re-signing Clowney. He reiterated that on Saturday, even after it became obvious through the draft the Seahawks are moving on.
They have to.
“We don’t shut the door on anything really,” Schneider said on an online Zoom call from his home and makeshift draft center.
“Basically, with Clowney, I’ll just put it out there: he did a great job for us. He was amazing this past year. We were in negotiations with his agent for a long time, and at some point, you need to move on and keep conducting business. It’s not Jadeveon’s fault. It’s nobody’s fault.
“You have to keep moving, or you’re going to get beat.”
Asked if Clowney’s waiting is holding up the Seahawks’ ability to sign any other free-agent pass rusher, Schneider gave a quick and flat answer: “No.”
Carroll said he’s stayed in contact with Clowney. The coach believes the defensive end is content to wait out the NFL’s and nation’s travel restrictions from COVID-19. When they lift, Clowney will, in theory, have the opportunity to prove himself medically fit for a contract more toward the money he is seeking. In the meantime, with the NFL canceling all offseason practices on fields and sending players workouts virtually, he’s not missing any real work with any team.
“Just staying in touch with him, he’s kind of patient with the time frames that are out there and all that,” Carroll said. “But he knows that the Seahawks are a place that he had some success and that he had a really good time and he contributed to our club (in 2019) and all of that. ‘
“That’s a pretty good feeling for him being out there still. John will take care of it. If there’s an opportunity that makes sense, we’ll dive back in and pursue it.”
In the meantime, the Seahawks are moving on.
Friday they drafted Taylor, Tennessee’s polished edge rusher after trading up 11 spots in the second round to get him. Carroll said they “easily” could have drafted him in the first round.
Sunday, they selected Robinson from Syracuse. Round five was a couple of rounds lower than Carroll said the 4-3 rush end’s talent suggested he’d go.
“He’s got the ability and the production to do stuff like guys that were picked quite a bit higher. We were fortunate to get that done,” Carroll said.
“They’re both kind of classic edge players,” the coach said of Robinson and Taylor. “They both have a good sense for it. They both have good get-off,” Carroll said. “They both play with good leverage. They’re not just flashy guys. They have the strength and kind of girth in their lower body to power around the edge and turn the corner like the good guys do. They’re both real coordinated.
“They look skillful, and they have technique that’s going to carry over on our level really clearly, and then we’ll add some tricks and all that. They really fit the bill. They look like you could put one guy on one end and one guy on the other end and you could be pretty good over the long haul. It’s pretty darn exciting.”
But even Carroll knows what it looks like now and what it may be aren’t necessarily the same.
The Seahawks were glowing about making pass rusher Malik McDowell their top draft choice in 2017. He got in an infamous ATV accident, causing severe head injuries. He never played a game for Seattle or any other NFL team.
Last year, Carroll and Schneider made L.J. Collier their first-round pick to be an inside-outside pass rusher. Collier got a rare high-foot-and-ankle sprain early in training camp, fell behind, recovered eventually, then was a healthy scratch for five games and a non-factor in all six others in 2019.
That’s part of the reason Seattle was next-to-last in the NFL in sacks last season. Only Miami had fewer than the Seahawks’ 28 in 16 regular-season games. Second-year man Rasheem Green led the team with a mere four sacks.
“It does get down to: we have to see,” Carroll said.
“They (Taylor and Robinson) both look very productive. I think Alton was involved in 18 or 19 sacks the last couple of years (at Syracuse) as a junior-college transfer. Big production. Darrell has been real productive, too, the same kind of numbers.
“If you look at all the four guys that we’ve added that rush the passer, I think that’s about eight or nine sacks apiece. So, if you put them all together, that would be great. If those guys can come up and create something like 36-40 sacks combined, shoot, we’ll really have hit the mark.”
The other two guys of “the four guys” Seattle’s added this offseason is former first-round pick Bruce Irvin and 2013 Seattle rookie Benson Mayowa. But they are stop-gap solutions. Irvin turns 33 in November. Mayowa turns 29 in August.
Do the Seahawks have enough proven pass rushers to bridge their obvious gap between those two and the two new draft picks on their needy pass rush?
“What happens in the third-down situations, when we move guys around some, you’ll see Rasheem and L.J. will work inside, along with J. Reed (recently re-signed defensive tackle Jarran Reed, who had 10 1/2 sacks two years ago playing next to since-traded Frank Clark). We think we have a nice mix in that regard. Those guys are developing pass rushers, and they’re learning their way and both have a lot of ability and a lot of upside to them.
“So, we can have some real fresh players coming in, with rotation. We have enough depth right now, to move it around. ...
“We’ll see how we do. It’s important that J. Reed comes back to the kind of production he had a couple years ago. If he can have any type of production close to that, with what we’re doing outside, it’s going to be a nice mix. We should be really better than we’ve been. We’re real positive about that.
“That doesn’t mean we’re gone working, either.”
The Seahawks could be adding more pass rushers, veterans ones in the remaining free-agent market stalled by the pandemic and Clowney waiting. Everson Griffen, Minnesota’s former edge rusher, is one veteran available but believed to be waiting to see what Clowney gets on the market to gauge what it will bare for him.
“John’s going to keep going, keep digging around and see if there’s a guy that might spark us in there, like we always do.
“Pretty fired up about it, really. We’re really pleased with what we’ve done.”
This story was originally published April 25, 2020 at 9:08 PM.
