Seahawks want to keep Quandre Diggs, D.J. Reed, Rashaad Penny, more. Will money let them?
It’s been clear since last season ended.
It’s gotten clearer this week at the NFL scouting combine.
Quandre Diggs is the Seahawks’ top priority to re-sign before he can get tempted by an offer from another team in a free-agent market that opens March 16.
That gives Seattle less than two weeks to keep its Pro Bowl safety and team leader.
The work is continuing at this week’s combine. General manager John Schneider is meeting in Indiana with the agents of the players the Seahawks want to keep, plus agents for the guys from other teams Seattle has an eye on acquiring.
Talking to Schneider and coach Pete Carroll this week in Indianapolis, plus league sources, The News Tribune has formed a priority listing for the players with expired contracts the Seahawks want to keep. They are, in order of team priority, need and likelihood of re-signing:
1. Diggs
2. Cornerback D.J. Reed
3. Running back Rashaad Penny
4. Left tackle Duane Brown
5. Tight end Gerald Everett
6. Defensive tackle Al Woods
Then, if it works out, others such as, perhaps, center Ethan Pocic (this team needs to fix its center position).
“We are going to try to keep all of our players,” Schneider said Wednesday in a hallway of Indianapolis’ JW Marriott hotel. “That’s why we are having all these meetings with all these agents, right?: ‘Yeah, we want your guy back.’
“But,” Schneider said, “how’s it going to work out?
That’s always the question this time of any league year.
The Seahawks had $34.8 million in space under the 2022 NFL salary cap Thursday, per overthecap.com. That’s eighth-most in the league. It’s the most spending power Seattle’s had in years.
Some of that $30 million-plus will go to signing free agents to address Seattle’s needs with the pass rush, on the offensive line and elsewhere. But despite a 7-10 season in 2021 that was the team’s first losing season since 2011, Carroll has said he thinks he has the core of a Super Bowl contender. He and Schneider say they want to keep, basically, as many of their own free agents as will agree to stay.
All-Pro linebacker Bobby Wagner has a scheduled salary-cap charge of $20.35 million for 2022. The Seahawks need to work with him to change that in order for him to play an 11th consecutive season for them this fall — plus re-sign all the pending free agents they want to retain.
The math, and history, say they won’t be able keep ‘em all.
“It’s a big challenge,” Carroll said Wednesday inside the Indiana Convention Center. “The next two weeks are huge.”
The combine is an annual accelerator to getting deals done.
“We’re able to meet face to face with these agents and listen to what their expectations are, what their goals are for their players in terms of fit and finances,” Schneider said. “So, yeah, this time of the year is always really exciting.”
Schneider and Carroll are going to NFL meetings this week at Lucas Oil Stadium. They have 15-minute interviews with selected draft prospects. They are attending player workouts in the stadium; those began Thursday.
And they have the many meetings with agents, over coffees, dinners, lunches, breakfasts, in hallways, hotel rooms, lobbies, wherever.
“Meeting with the agents, listen to how they feel, what they feel their fair market value is, and how we see their fair market. And it’s like this very wide range,” Schneider said. “And you build off of that.
Schneider said he’s in meetings from 7 a.m. through midnight each day at the combine.
“We’re able to take in all the information and just try to learn, try to figure out like, ‘OK, we learned this here. We learned that there, at that position. This position’s going to be strong. This player’s expectations are going to be higher than we think, or lower,’” the GM said.
“It is just all over the place.”
Diggs’, Reed’s deals
The Seahawks gave safety Jamal Adams a $70 million contract extension last summer. It’s the richest deal for a safety in NFL history.
Now Diggs’ contract is up. The 29-year-old veteran is coming off the first two Pro Bowl seasons of his seven-year career. He has become a bonding force in Seattle’s defense and locker room. He’s been ultra-popular among teammates since his trade from being a co-captain for the Detroit Lions in the middle of the 2019 season.
He’s the only NFL player with three or more interceptions in each of the past five seasons. He’s set his career high with five interceptions in each of the last two years.
“Nobody can tell me I’m not the best in the league” at safety, Diggs said last season.
Months after making Adams the richest safety, how comfortable are the Seahawks with also giving Diggs a top-of-the-market deal he feels he’s earned?
“We’ve always just tried to keep our best players,” Schneider said.
The GM said that is why the Seahawks basically skimped (our word, not his) on their offensive line for years. They did that while they paid top dollar to keep what was then the league’s top defense together past the team’s Super Bowls in February 2014 and ‘15.
“We were paying Richard Sherman and Kam Chancellor in Earl Thomas, and Bobby Wagner, and K.J. (Wright), you know what I mean?” Schneider said. “So you try to keep all your best players.
“And so that’s going to be what we try to do, is to keep everybody.”
It may take $40 million or more over four years to keep Diggs. More than $100 million for two safeties is money that more typically goes to pass rushers and cornerbacks, the more valued defensive positions in the pass-loving NFL.
And that likely $100 million doesn’t count the money it will take for Seattle to re-sign Reed. He’s the only consistently performing cornerback the team had while playing eight of them last year. Reed is likely to command $4 million or more per season, way up from his $920,000 salary from 2021.
“People can say, ‘Well, this position...,’” Schneider said of safety. “That’s why I think it’s the ultimate team game.
“Well, this position is isn’t as important as that position.’ Well, talk to our analytics guys. Everybody on that field is making an impact on that play, on a specific play. So even though, especially at safety, people say, ‘Well, that guy, he’s not involved in the play,’ yeah, he is involved in the play. Because quarterback’s checking him out, and seeing what he’s doing.”
Diggs broke his leg and dislocated his ankle in Seattle’s final game of the 2021 season, Jan. 9 at Arizona.
Carroll said Diggs will be ready for training camp. That begins in late July.
The coach has been talking as if Seattle has already re-signed Diggs. He said in January after Diggs’ injury and surgery in Phoenix it should be implied already how valuable Diggs has become to the team.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt (Diggs will be ready for training camp). That’s all he’s thinking about,” Carroll said this week. “He’ll be back before then, I would think.”
Schneider was asked if those recent injuries lowers Diggs’ value for his new contract.
“I don’t think it affects his market, no,” the GM said. “As bad as it was and as awful as everybody felt for him, my impression is that he’s going to recover well.
“Everybody just felt awful for him. But he’s doing great. When we acquired him from Detroit, he’s been awesome. And he’s a darn good player.”
Offensive tackle
Veteran Pro Bowl left tackle Duane Brown and Brandon Shell, Seattle’s starting right tackle the last two seasons, are also pending free agents.
You guessed it: Carroll said Wednesday the Seahawks want to re-sign both.
“It’s possible. It’s definitely possible for us to do that,” the coach said. “And that’s what we’re intending to do. I don’t know that it’s going to happen. I think we’ll have to wait and see, depends on other spots and what happens.”
Brown said in January he’d be willing to do a one-year deal to stay in Seattle. He said he’s realistic, turning 37 before next season, on what he may need to do with his next contract.
“I’m not opposed to it,” the four-time Pro Bowl and 2012 All-Pro selection said at the end of his 14th season in the league.
Given how valued left tackles are protecting quarterbacks in the NFL, Brown is likely to get multiyear offers from other teams. That is, if he goes into free agency without a Seahawks deal by March 16.
Are the Seahawks only thinking a one-year deal for Brown? Or are they thinking longer term if necessary to compete in the free-agent market for him?
“No, no. There is no limitation right now. No. We’re wide open,” Carroll said.
Center
It’s below the team’s priorities to re-sign Reed, Penny and Everett for Russell Wilson’s offense and the 34-year-old run-stopping Woods. But the Seahawks need to figure out center.
They’ve had eight in the last six years. That’s after trading Max Unger to New Orleans for tight end Jimmy Graham.
Pocic was Seattle’s starting center the final 10 games of 2021. He replace Kyle Fuller, the team’s center for the first seven games last season.
Both of them had their contracts expire Jan. 9.
Schneider said when asked about center, the anchor of the offensive line that has been the Seahawks’ problem area for years: “Ethan had a real nice year. Fuller played in there. And then, nobody’s even seen Dakoda Shepley yet. And he was a guy that we’re really excited about claiming (off waivers at the start of last season, from San Francisco). ...
“He just hasn’t had a chance to play yet. ...So, yeah, we were fired up about him.”
This story was originally published March 3, 2022 at 7:30 AM.
