Forget this finale. The real intrigue begins after it for these changing Seahawks
Bobby Wagner just finished his 10th NFL season.
The 31-year-old All-Pro linebacker has been around long enough to know his Seahawks could have more changes than in a usual offseason once they’ve returned from Sunday’s season finale at Arizona.
Such is life when a team has its first losing season in more than a decade.
“You think about what the next year looks like and just, period, what the future holds,” Wagner said, “because this was a season I don’t think we all planned for. We didn’t plan for the season to go this way.
“So, obviously, there’s going to be some changes.”
The changes most are wondering about are at the top of the franchise.
Signs within the team facility suggest Seahawks chair Jody Allen is inclined to keep status quo with the franchise pillars following just the second non-playoff season for Seattle in 10 years.
Allen just last year signed Pete Carroll to a contract extension through 2025. Allen then re-upped general manager John Schneider through the 2027 draft. That’s kept the coach and GM in the same lock-step they’ve been in since the Seahawks hired Carroll from USC and Schneider from the Green Bay Packers in 2010.
Russell Wilson still has two more years on his $140 million contract that ends with the 2023 season. The franchise quarterback keeps saying he “hopes” to remain in Seattle, and he plans to win three more Super Bowls.
“My plan is to win Super Bowls. And my plan is to win them here. It’s that simple,” Wilson said Thursday. “There’s nothing, really, else, other than that.”
Wilson has a no-trade clause. He and his agent Mark Rodgers insisted on that as the final piece to his current contract.
Since he has the power to veto any potential trade, Wilson was asked this past week why he hasn’t just come out and squelched incessant national rumors he may be leaving Seattle by saying something to the effect of “forget it, I’m not leaving.”
“Well I think first of all, when it comes to no-trade clauses in sports, the main reason is so that teams can’t trade somebody to anywhere. That’s the number one reason, right?” Wilson said.
The free agents
DK Metcalf said this past week he would love an extension with Seattle this offseason.
“Of course,” he said. “I’m not trying to leave.”
The 24-year-old wide receiver set his career high with 12 touchdowns in the first 16 games this season. He still has a final year, 2022, on his contract.
So he needs to wait in line.
Fifteen Seahawks are eligible to become unrestricted free agents when the new league year begins in mid-March.
The headliners are Pro Bowl safety Quandre Diggs, veteran left tackle Duane Brown, tight end Gerald Everett, starting cornerback D.J. Reed, recently resurgent running back Rashaad Penny.
Another three players are restricted free agents: cornerback Bless Austin, center/guard Kyle Fuller and guard Phil Haynes, who started Seattle’s week-16 win over Detroit. If the Seahawks make a qualifying tender offer to any of the restricted free agents the team retains the right to match any offer he might get from another team.
A dozen Seahawks are to be exclusive-rights free agents this offseason. They include Ryan Neal, the starting strong safety since Jamal Adams’ season-ending shoulder surgery last month, plus defensive tackle Bryan Mone and wide receivers Penny Hart and John Ursua. Ursua spent this season on injured reserve.
Diggs’ price went up
Diggs has wanted a new contract since before last summer. He “held-in” during training camp; he showed up and attended meetings but did not practice.
“In my mind, nobody can tell me I’m not the best in the league,” he said of free safety.
Diggs said that in early November, the day he became the only NFL player with at least three interceptions in each of the past five seasons (2017-21). The leader the Seahawks traded with Detroit to get in the middle of the 2019 season entered Sunday’s game tied for fourth in the NFL with five interceptions. That equaled the career high he set in 2020 for Seattle, when he tied for the NFC lead in picks.
He also had 91 tackles entering Sunday, the most of his seven-year career.
“It’s only my fourth year playing safety, really,” he said. “I think a lot of people forget that. You know, I haven’t been doing this my whole career. I’ve been a nickel for three years of my career (2015, ‘16 and ‘17, playing 45%, 54% and 73% of the Lions’ defensive plays his first three NFL seasons), then moved to safety.
“So I think I’m doing pretty well at the position.”
Re-signing Diggs is a more expensive issue for the Seahawks now than it would have been before this season. He just was named to his second consecutive Pro Bowl team, the second of his career. He’s become a locker-room leader. He nails his coverage assignments. And he pretty much never came off the field this season. He played 99% of Seattle’s defensive snaps. That was the most playing time of his career.
His $6.2 million per season in average salary was the 19th-highest among NFL safeties this season.
He, Carroll and anyone who knows the Seahawks’ colors are blue and green know Diggs is playing better than the 19th-best safety in the league.
Minnesota’s Harrison Smith (an average of $16 million per year), Denver’s Justin Simmons ($15.25 million per season) and former Washington Husky Budda Baker of Arizona ($14.75 million per) are the highest-paid free safeties. Baker plays a more interchangeable strong and free safety for the Cardinals.
Diggs turns 29 in two weeks. He’s three years older than Baker, 10 months older than Simmons and four years younger than Smith. Baker has been selected to twice as many Pro Bowls as Diggs.
A ballpark figure the Seahawks could present Diggs is around $14 million per year. The Seahawks have the most salary-cap space for 2022 they’ve had entering an offseason in many years: $56 million. That’s sixth-most in the NFL per overthecap.com.
It’s also why Brown could be returning to play a 15th NFL season for the Seahawks, past his 37th birthday.
What about Brown?
Of course he’s slowed and has had to adapt as he advanced into his later 30s. But the left tackle remains what he was when Seattle traded with Houston for him in October 2017: the Seahawks’ best offensive lineman.
Then again, that’s been a low bar in recent years.
That’s another reason for the team to keep him.
Brown’s fiendish work ethic and renewed sense the last couple years of taking care of his body, doing stretching and yoga and eating very healthy foods, have been as strong of examples in the locker room as his sage advice and expert play.
He joined Diggs in holding in during training camp last summer, wanting a new Seahawks deal then.
“I would love to be back, man,” Brown said this past week. “I’m so grateful just four the last four years. The city of Seattle. The fans. The organization. You (in the media). My teammates. It’s just been incredible four years for me.
“I would love to be back.”
Three-fifths of the starting offensive line, plus tight end Everett, who only had a one-year deal, are unsigned for 2022. Everett, center Ethan Pocic, right tackle Brandon Shell and Brown had their contracts end with Sunday’s finale.
Brown is still the key to the line. And the line is the key to Wilson’s, and thus the team’s, success.
“He is a settling factor,” Carroll said of Brown. “He’s the guy that has so much confidence, such a good voice that everybody listens to when he is speaking, and they also feel him when he gets aggravated. He gets pissed off at stuff because he didn’t make the play that he wanted to make, or he didn’t like what happened on the play.
Reed, Penny priorities
The Seahawks can’t and won’t keep all their pending free agents. They never do.
But Reed has been the one cornerback Carroll has counted on throughout a carousel of new players in Seattle’s secondary the last two seasons. Carroll loves Reed’s aggressiveness on passes in the air at right cornerback.
The 5-foot-9 Reed’s been so good he’s changed Carroll’s approach of wanting Richard Sherman-type, 6-3 length in his corners.
Reed had two interceptions Jan. 2 against Detroit. He doesn’t want to go anywhere. He appreciates the Seahawks signing him off the waivers San Francisco put him on while he was injured in the summer of 2020. He wants to continue this big chance Carroll, Schneider and Seattle gave him.
This time last month Penny wasn’t sure to be signing a contract with any team for the 2022 season. He was coming off his second injury this season and sixth in four years since the Seahawks made him their first-round pick in 2018.
But he entered Arizona having romped for at least 135 yards in three of the previous four games. That included a career-high 170 against the Lions.
Now Carroll says the Seahawks need Penny for next season. That’s because lead back Chris Carson’s return in 2022 from neck surgery and a cervical issue is no sure thing. Carson’s fill-in, Alex Collins, also is due to become a free agent this offseason.
“I’m just thankful,” Penny said before the final game.
Now will he, and the others, get paid?
This story was originally published January 9, 2022 at 9:48 AM.
