As they wait on Jadeveon Clowney, Seahawks have another, younger, pass rusher to consider
There’s another veteran pass rusher onto the market.
Pete Carroll and John Schneider pride themselves on being in on every possible deal around the NFL. So, yes, expect they will consider Taco Charlton.
The Miami Dolphins waived the former first-round pick on Thursday. Charlton played just one season and 10 games for the Dolphins. He had a career-high five sacks in those games. The Dolphins then benched him for three of their final five games of 2019. He was inactive because “partly because of his shortcomings against the run,” according to the Miami Herald.
As the needy Seahawks wait on Jadeveon Clowney to decide where he will play next, they aren’t focusing on a defensive end’s “shortcomings against the run.” They need pass rushers to sack quarterbacks, in a huge way.
The Dolphins were the only team with fewest sacks last season than Seattle’s 28.
Charlton cleared waivers Friday. He is now a free agent, available for any team to sign to a new deal.
Teams get 24 hours to claim waived players, per league rules. Picking goes this time of year in the reverse order of the NFL’s final regular-season standings from the previous year. Seattle at 27 and all the other 31 teams passed on the chance to claim Charlton and assume a $1.83 million salary for 2020.
There are reasons why Carroll and Schneider may, as they sometimes say, kick the tires on Charlton possibly fitting in Seattle. Just as they are likely looking into Everson Griffen, the 32-year-old former captain of the Minnesota Vikings.
Charlton is only 25. He played in all 16 games of his rookie season of 2017 with Dallas, after the Cowboys drafted him 28th overall out of Michigan. He had three sacks that first season and just one in 11 games of 2018. He finished the 2018 season missing four of the Cowboys’ last six games. That was partly because he had ankle and shoulder injuries—and partly because the Cowboys benched him as a healthy scratch.
He would likely come cheaply, given two teams—including the one that drafted him just 2 1/2 years earlier—have discarded him in the last seven months.
And Carroll has a strong confidence he can rehabilitate the careers of the discarded within his nurturing, competitive, lively Seahawks environment. He has signed seven former first-round picks from 2013 alone, all of whom had been given up on by their former teams: offensive lineman Luke Joeckel (the second-overall pick in ‘13), defensive end Dion Jordan (third), defensive end Ziggy Ansah (fifth), linebacker Barkevious Mingo (sixth), recently signed offensive lineman Chance Warmack (10th), guard D.J. Fluker (11th) and defensive tackle Sheldon Richardson (13th).
He and general manager John Schneider have tried it in particular with pass rushers the last couple years. They tried it with Ansah this time last year, signing him to a one-year deal worth up to $9 million as he was coming off shoulder surgery. The 30-year-old Ansah stayed hurt into September then had just 2 1/2 sacks last season. Seattle let him leave in free agency, where he remains unsigned.
Carroll and Schneider tried to revive Jordan’s failed career, signing the Dolphins’ formerly troubled first-round pick to Seattle before the 2017 season. Jordan arrived with a knee injury that needed surgery and took months to heal. He had four sacks in that ‘17 season, then only 1 1/2 amid more injuries in 2018. The Seahawks let him go in free agency last spring. He signed with Oakland, had two sacks in seven games last season, before the Raiders released him. Jordan, 30, is also unsigned as a free agent.
Another reason to look into Charlton: he’s 6 feet 6, 270 pounds. Carroll loves height in his edge rushers, particularly the “Leo” end off the defense’s weakside.
The Seahawks drafted Darrell Taylor from Tennessee in the second round of last weekend’s draft with the intent to make him their new “Leo” defensive end. At 6-4, 267 pounds, Taylor is the same size Cliff Avril was when he came to Seattle from winless Detroit and turned into a Super Bowl-champion and Pro Bowl “Leo” end for the Seahawks.
The Seahawks also drafted edge rusher Alton Robinson from Syracuse, in the fifth round on Saturday.
Nothing new on the Clowney front, aside from noise generated by returning defensive tackle Jarran Reed re-claiming his jersey number 90 he had sold to Clowney for 2019, Clowney’s lone season with the Seahawks. Schneider was on the team’s flagship radio station in Seattle, KIRO AM, Thursday. The GM basically scoffed at Reed taking back 90 as being no news.
Asked by 710 ESPN’s hosts if people were buying into a non-story, Schneider said: ”I think you’re buying into it, because I don’t remember approving that...I don’t remember where that came from, but it became something (Wednesday) morning.”
To be sure, teams don’t decide whom to sign, or re-sign, based on laundry.
Schneider said last week “the door’s not closed” on Seattle re-signing Clowney. Carroll said it’s become obvious the three-time Pro Bowl edge rusher is waiting—most likely on the league’s travel restrictions because of the coronavirus to ease. That would enable Clowney to get physical examinations from other teams to prove he’s medically worthy of the bigger money he’s been seeking since the winter, more toward $20 million per year.
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.
“We don’t shut the door on anything, really,” Schneider said on an online Zoom call from his home and makeshift draft center Saturday.
The Seahawks are believed to have offered him four years at up to $18.5 million per year. That was last month.
“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.”
Last spring, Dallas defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli had what he reportedly described as a “man talk” with Charlton, on having better body language on and off the field—basically, to be more mature. Team owner Jerry Jones was quoted in Dallas last summer saying the Cowboys liked Charlton but wanted the edge rusher to expand his pass-rushing repetoire, particularly his versatility to play left (where he often was in Dallas) and right defensive end.
The Cowboys gave up trying with Charlton last Sept. 18 when they waived him as defensive end Robert Quinn was returning from a two-game suspension to make his Dallas debut. The Dolphins claimed Charlton off waivers the next day.
He’s been only a situational player so far in his NFL career, never playing more than 39 percent of his team’s snaps in a season.
This story was originally published April 30, 2020 at 2:56 PM.
