Seahawks’ priority free agents: Quandre Diggs, D.J. Reed. They intend to re-sign both
Changes?
Oh, yes. After going 7-10 in their first losing season in 10 years, there will be changes for the Seahawks in 2022.
Pete Carroll firing defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr., his trusted assistant back to 2004 at USC proves that. The Seahawks’ head man promoted Clint Hurtt from line coach to defensive coordinator to replace Norton.
The task for Hurtt, new associate head coach for defense Sean Desai in from Chicago and new defensive passing game coordinator and secondary coach Karl Scott from Minnesota: bring more of a Vic Fangio-, Denver Broncos-like mix to Seattle. That is, more varied coverage and pressure schemes to the Seahawks who were ranked 31st in the NFL last season in pass defense.
There will be more changes.
All-Pro linebacker Bobby Wagner might have to alter his contract scheduled to carry a salary-cap charge of $20.35 million next season, second on the team only to Russell Wilson’s $37 million. That might be how Wagner returns for an 11th year with Seattle.
“You think about what the next year looks like and just, period, what the future holds,” Wagner said Dec. 29, “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.”
Ineffective Benson Mayowa, Kerry Hyder, Robert Nkemdiche and other free-agent signings for 2021 might not be back in 2022. So expect Carroll and general manager John Schneider to change up their defensive front again in an effort to generate more consistent pressure on quarterbacks.
But changing from D.J. Reed at cornerback?
That doesn’t appear to be a sound way to improve the Seahawks defense and team.
Reed is the only sure thing in Seattle’s defensive secondary. It mostly changed, got hurt and failed in 2021 while the Seahawks missed the playoffs for just the second time in 10 seasons.
Reed is at the end of his contract. The Seahawks’ starting cornerback is on track to become a free agent next month.
Reed said he talked to GM Schneider on his way into the offseason on locker clean-out day Jan. 10, the day after the Seahawks’ season-ending win at Arizona. The cornerback called it “a good conversation.”
Reed earned $920,000 in the final year of his contract in 2021. The top 43 cornerback salaries in the league this past season were all at least five times what Reed got paid, down to Tavon Young of Baltimore at an average of $4.67 million per year. It will likely cost at least $4 million per year to keep Reed.
If they don’t think they can reach a long-term deal with Reed, the franchise tag became an option this week. Tuesday was the first day of the period to designate franchise-tag players for 2022. The window closes March 8. Franchise tags allow teams to keep would-be free agents from going on the market, with a one-year, guaranteed salary at an average of the NFL’s top pays for the tagged player’s position.
Seattle has used the franchise tag just twice in the Carroll-Schneider era of 12 years: on kicker Olindo Mare in 2010, the first months of the regime, and on defensive end Frank Clark in 2019. The Seahawks then traded Clark.
Reed wants to remain with Seattle. He will always appreciate Carroll and Schneider for signing him off injury waivers when San Francisco gave up on him in the summer of 2020.
“I definitely want to stay here,” the 25-year-old Reed said, “but the price has to be right.
“I’m going to go into free agency and, say, not necessarily the highest bidder, but I want to look at everything as far as organization, what type of scheme I’m going into and ‘Am I setting myself up for success,’ et cetera, et cetera.
“But, for me, personally, I love Seattle. So we’ll see what happens.”
Reed broke the Richard Sherman-esque prototype Carroll had sought for a decade with his Seahawks cornerbacks: long, 6-foot-3 men with physical advantages at the line of scrimmage over opposing receivers.
“We love what D.J. has done,” Carroll said.
Revolving cornerbacks
To understand why it now seems imperative Seattle retains Reed for 2022 requires a review of how jumbled and ineffective the team’s cornerbacks were in 2021.
Last offseason, the Seahawks let both their starting cornerbacks from the start of 2020 leave. Carroll and Schneider decided not to get involved in the high bidding for their draft pick Shaquill Griffin. They allowed his rookie contract to end. The 2019 Pro Bowl cornerback signed with his home-state Jacksonville Jaguars in March 2021 for up to $44.5 million with $29 million guaranteed.
Seattle also let Quinton Dunbar enter free agency after one season of injury and legal troubles with the team in 2020.
The Seahawks played eight cornerbacks from the end of training camp last August through the end of the 2021 season: Reed, Ahkello Witherspoon, Tre Flowers, Ugo Amadi, rookie draft choice Tre Brown, John Reid, Sidney Jones and Michael Jackson.
“I thought we adapted well,” Reed said.
“Playing into the season, basically we had a new roster (at cornerback).”
The same day last March Griffin signed with Jacksonville, Seattle signed Witherspoon, the former 49ers starter, to a one-year contract with $4 million guaranteed. He and Flowers, whom Carroll converted from college safety to NFL starter when the Seahawks drafted him in 2018, were the starters deep into last training camp.
But Witherspoon didn’t exactly give coaches confidence he was the man to replace to Griffin at left cornerback. He failed to make plays on passes during preseason games. In summer practices, DK Metcalf and other teammates routinely beat him.
By late August, Carroll decided on Reed over Witherspoon. He moved Reed from the right-cornerback spot, in which he thrived in his Seahawks debut late in the 2020 season, to left cornerback. Seattle then traded Witherspoon to Pittsburgh just before the season began, for a fifth-round draft pick in 2023.
Reed was the only consistent starter in Seattle’s secondary to start the 2021 opener and be healthy through the season finale. Jamal Adams, the $70 million safety, had season-ending shoulder surgery in early December. Pro Bowl safety Quandre Diggs broke his leg and dislocated his ankle in the final game, Jan. 9 at Arizona.
Diggs’ contract is also up. He is the Seahawks’ top priority to re-sign for 2022.
Carroll said in January that it should be obvious how much the team intends to re-sign Diggs this offseason.
“It should be implicit for us in messaging, because our message has not changed,” Carroll said. “All I can tell you is that he is an awesome part of our team, and we would love to have him with us. This injury is not going to be one that is going to keep him from playing, so we just have to go through it.”
Right on the right
Reed was not the same cornerback on the left side replacing Witherspoon for the first three games of 2021. After the Seahawks lost consecutive games allowing 30-plus points against Tennessee and at Minnesota in September, they were on pace to set NFL records for passing yards allowed. So Carroll made another change with his cornerbacks.
He put Reed back on the right side. That benched Flowers.
The Tennessee and Minnesota games in Weeks 2 and 3 exemplified Carroll’s concerns with Seattle’s pass defense in 2021.
In the team’s 33-30 overtime loss to the Titans, Flowers and Reed broke the No. 1 rule of Carroll’s defense: they got beat deep. Repeatedly, for game-changing plays.
The next week in Seattle’s 30-17 loss at Minnesota, the Vikings converted on 9 of 13 third downs. Flowers and Reed often played way off Vikings receivers at the snap, at times double the amount of yards Minnesota needed for the first down.
On eight of the 10 times the Vikings threw on third down against the Seahawks, a Seattle cornerback was lined up so far off his receiver he was behind the line to gain at the snap. Often, that cornerback was then back-pedaling at the snap, to get even further off the receiver in front of him.
Reed said his Seahawks got out-schemed — which, of course, means out-coached.
“They schemed our ass up,” Reed said of the Vikings on Sept. 23. “I mean, it just felt similar to the Bills game last year (in November 2020 when Buffalo rolled to 44 points, the most allowed in the Carroll era).
“Whatever we were doing, just getting schemed up.”
Flowers said outside the locker room in Minneapolis on the way to the team bus that September Sunday, “I’ve got a couple questions myself,” about Carroll’s and Norton’s schemes.
“Sadly, y’all want me to be Sherman,” Flowers said outside the locker room after the Vikings repeatedly threw in front of his and other Seahawks’ soft coverage in scoring 23 unanswered points.
That was the last game Flowers played in Seattle’s defense. The Seahawks waived him a couple weeks later. Flowers played in Super Bowl 56 this month for Cincinnati, against the Los Angeles Rams.
Brown started three games after Flowers’ release, then went on injured reserve for the rest of his rookie season. Jones, with 11 starts, and Reed, 14 starts, became the regular cornerbacks over the bulk of the season.
The Seahawks’ pass defense improved. The defensive backs got “stickier,” in Reed’s word, in coverage, not nearly as far off receivers as they were in Minnesota. And they played more man coverage as the season went on.
Seattle allowed more than 300 yards passing just once over the final seven games, and that was 317 Houston largely gained during garbage time of the Seahawks’ rout of the Texans. After allowing 300-plus yards passing in four of their first five games, including 358 by Matthew Stafford when the Rams won in Seattle in Week 5, the Seahawks allowed more than 300 net passing yards just twice over the final 12 games.
Yet foes completed 61% (44 of 77 throws) at Jones in 2021, according to Pro Football Reference. Jones’ contract has ended. The former Washington Husky the Seahawks signed from Jacksonville just before this past season’s opener will become a free agent next month. The coaches love Brown. Upon healing, he could take Jones’ spot as starting left cornerback for 2022.
Will Reed be starting again at right cornerback? Opponents completed just 47.7% of their passes at him in 2021, 42 of 88 targets. His 78 tackles at cornerback were the most of his four-year career.
The Seahawks created just 18 turnovers in 17 games, perhaps Carroll’s biggest point of emphasis to improve this year. Seattle had just four interceptions in its final five games of 2021. Reed had two of them, in one game: Jan. 2 in the team’s blowout win over Detroit.
Despite the production, Carroll gushing on about his play and his stated desire to return, it’s not a sure thing Reed returns. Few things are in the NFL.
The day Carroll fired Norton last month he also fired defensive backs coach Andre Curtis. Reed considered Curtis to be a friend for what his position coach did to revive his career beginning in the middle of Seattle’s 2020 season.
“Since I’ve been here, Andre Curtis, he’s been a great friend and mentor for me, just as far as not really teaching me, because I already knew how to play corner, but giving me a foundation of how they want here and making it very clear what they wanted from their corners as far as technique and everything.
“So he did a great job for me, personally, and I feel like for the other guys, as well.”
‘We have to take control’
In each of the last two seasons, Seattle has started on a pace of giving up the most passing yards and points in NFL history. Carroll has said a better start defensively in 2022 will be key to next season.
It’s a reason Hurtt is now the coordinator.
Reed says that’s on the players, not coaches.
“I feel like the players, we have to — how do I explain it? — we have to take control,” Reed said. “Obviously, our defensive coordinator, he calls the plays, but at the end of the day the guys on the field have to get the job done.
“So for us, it’s about us taking control, doing extra inside the defensive scheme that they give us, but doing more as far as communication, changing stuff when we see the offensive doing something. In game, changing plans and stuff, that’s all on the players that people don’t seem to understand.
“We did that towards the end of the year, and that’s why we played better.”
This story was originally published February 23, 2022 at 1:30 PM.
