Agent confirms Seahawks are re-signing Benson Mayowa for needy pass rush
.jpg "San Francisco 49ers quarterback C.J. Beathard (3) is sacked by Seattle Seahawks defensive end Benson Mayowa (95) during the first half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Jan. 3, 2021, in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)")
The Seahawks incrementally filling their needs in the second phases of free agency continues.
Now, the pass rush.
Seattle is re-signing veteran defensive end Benson Mayowa for the 2021 season. The agency representing the 29-year-old pass rusher, David Canter and DEC Management, confirmed the agreement Tuesday afternoon.
It is a two-year contract. It’s worth up to $8.8 million, with $4.61 million of that guaranteed in 2021, Ian Rapoport of NFL Network reported.
The Athletic reported the deal contains two voidable years at the end. That’s so the Seahawks can spread Mayowa’s bonus money across four years instead of two for salary-cap purposes.
This is a new tack coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider are using in a most unusual offseason. The NFL salary cap has dropped from $198 million to $182.5 million per team after lost game-day revenues in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic. But the league last week signed new television and streaming-right deals that will net the NFL $10 billion per year for 10 years beginning in 2023.
That’s when each team is expecting to realize a spike in the cap, into the range of $220 million-plus per team.
So if there was ever a time for the Seahawks to depart from their norm and defer current player expeditures into 2023 and beyond, it’s right now. They’ve done it to re-sign lead running back Chris Carson. They’ve done it to bring back center Ethan Pocic.
And now they are doing it to retain Mayowa for the pass rush.
He signed a one-year deal worth $2.5 million guaranteed with Seattle for the 2020 season last April.
Mayowa had six sacks in 13 games, nine starts, last season in his return to the Seahawks. He was consistently in the opposing backfield providing what Seattle’s defensive line lacked in 2019: pressure on quarterbacks. Mayowa was second on the team in pressure rate, per analytics service TruMediaNetworks.
In 2019 with the Raiders, Mayowa had a career-high seven sacks. He played just 302 snaps that season, the lowest of his career since his rookie season with the Seahawks when he played just two games. All seven of Mayowa’s sacks for the Raiders in 2019 came in the first seven games. His playing time plummeted from there.
Mayowa’s 13 sacks combined the last two seasons while in limited roles encouraged the Seahawks to re-sign him.
So did Seattle releasing Carlos Dunlap this month. Dunlap revitalized the pass rush and the defense upon his arrival in late October in a trade from Cincinnati.
Mayowa had two sacks in six games before Dunlap arrived. With Dunlap on the line with him, Mayowa had four sacks in his final six regular-season games. Dunlap took many of Mayowa’s starting snaps at “Leo” end on the line, yet Mayowa’s pressuring of quarterbacks continued.
But Dunlap cost too much in the deal Seattle inherited from the Bengals. So the Seahawks cut the two-time Pro Bowl defensive end, to save $14 million in salary-cap space.
That’s allowed them to since trade for Raiders starting guard Gabe Jackson, re-sign Carson (two years, up to $14,625,000, with a voidable third year), sign free-agent tight end Gerald Everett (one year, $6 million), sign free-agent cornerback Ahkello Witherspoon (one year, $4 million), re-sign center Ethan Pocic (one year, $3 million, with a voidable second year) and now bring back Mayowa.
When all of these deals become official in the coming days, the Seahawks will have to cut veterans or restructure existing contracts to fit the moves under the cap.
This story was originally published March 23, 2021 at 4:02 PM.
