Uh-oh: Signs are yet another Seahawks’ top rookie pass rusher’s going to be out a while
The pass rush remains the Seahawks’ most concerning issue for this season.
It has been since before still-unsigned Jadeveon Clowney went on his free agency to nowhere in March.
Now it’s beginning to look, and sound, as if Seattle’s youngest, best weapon to get more pressure on quarterbacks this year may not be ready for the opener.
Rookie second-round pick and rush end Darrell Taylor has yet to begin running. He is on the non-football-injury list while slowed in his recovery from January surgery to fix a stress fracture in his lower leg. Surgeons inserted a Titanium rod in his leg seven months ago. That was after he played his entire final season for the University of Tennessee with the injury last year.
Taylor isn’t near practicing for the first time with the Seahawks. On Monday, the team had its first of 14 practices in pads before the opening game, Sept. 13 at Atlanta.
“We’d really like to get him two good weeks of work with us,” Carroll said Monday.
“So, the race is on to get there (before the opener).
“He hasn’t run yet. We are really taking care of him, and making sure when he gets back he stays back. When he jumps back out there, we know he’s going to be a factor. It’s going to make a difference, too, just to see his speed on the field, too. So we are really excited to get him back.
“But we’ve just got to wait it out and be patient.”
Carroll mentioned, as he did last week, “they did a couple procedures” for Taylor “to make sure they are doing everything they can early so that he can really come bustin’ back.
“I would … it’s going to be a bit, just to be sure, to ensure that.”
Taylor played last college season through a stress fracture in his lower leg he got in August. He played through Tennessee’s bowl game and the Senior Bowl college all-star showcase for NFL scouts in January, then had surgery Jan. 30.
“My leg feels as healthy as a horse,” Taylor said in April.
But he’s watched the first four practices wearing a mask as a COVID-19 virus safeguard instead of his helmet.
He’s been watching the two veterans Seattle signed this offseason practice as the starting rush ends: Bruce Irvin, who turns 33 in November, and Benson Mayowa. Mayowa turned 29 this month.
Both are coming off career-high seasons in sacks, Irvin with 8 1/2 in Carolina and Mayowa with seven (all in the first seven games of 2019) for the Raiders.
Carroll said Irvin, the Seahawks’ first-round pick in 2012 who left for Oakland in free agency four years ago, is already “in a groove” of maturity and smooth, savvy play one week into training camp.
Mayowa has impressed Carroll by showing true pass-rusher skills with speed off the ball and an array of rush moves on offensive linemen.
Then again, as of Carroll speaking Monday those blockers had yet to be full go in full pads to repel Mayowa’s rushes.
The coach singled out Alton Robinson, the rookie fifth-round pick from Syracuse, for a couple of stand-out edge rushes in the first days of camp. Robinson has been the second-team weakside, “Leo” rush end opposite Shaquill Griffin in nickel defense through the first four practices.
The Seahawks tried and failed to sign four-time Pro Bowl defensive end Everson Griffen in free agency. Carroll’s former end at USC signed last week with Dallas for one year and reportedly up to $6 million instead.
Clowney remains the Seahawks’ biggest offseason/now preseason priority to sign. He is still a free agent. The three-time Pro Bowl pass rusher who debuted for Seattle last season after his trade from Houston is trying to shop with other teams to leverage the offer Seattle gave him five months ago. That offer came just as the coronavirus pandemic was shutting down the NFL — and Clowney’s shopping.
Carroll has said Clowney knows the Seahawks offer, and that the team would re-open that door if Clowney comes back to them. So far, the market has come back to Seattle, but Clowney has not.
The Seahawks drafted Taylor and Robinson in April intending to re-sign Clowney and fix what was the second-worst sack unit in the league last season.
Now, less than four weeks before the first game, they have only Robinson on the field readying for it.
No one around the team wants to connect these dots, but Taylor is the third top rookie pass rusher in as many such selections to sit out extended time with an injury at the start of or even before training camp.
L.J. Collier was the team’s first-round pick last year. He sustained a rare, “nasty,” in Carroll’s word, foot-and-ankle sprain in the first days of the 2019 training camp, in late July. The Seahawks initially thought the defensive end from Texas Christian was going to miss the entire season last year. He missed all of August and the preseason. He returned to play in Week 2, but wasn’t fully ready then. When he was healthy, he was inactive for five games last season. His rookie year was basically a loss.
“Now? To see him now? He looks like a different guy,” Carroll said.
This past week Collier has been an inside, hybrid defensive tackle next to Rasheem Green in a new speed-rush package in nickel defense. Irvin and Mayowa have been the outside rush ends so far in nickel.
In 2017, the Seahawks made rush end Malik McDowell from Michigan State their top draft choice. He got in a mysterious ATV accident in Michigan that summer and sustained serious head injuries. He never practiced nor played for Seattle or in the NFL, beyond a minicamp.
This story was originally published August 17, 2020 at 12:38 PM.
