Why the Seahawks changed their minds, pulled their offer to Ryan Neal: It’s a Love thing
Pete Carroll loves Ryan Neal.
But that wasn’t enough to keep Julian Love from taking Neal’s job in Seattle.
The Seahawks this past weekend made a cold business move. They withdrew the qualifying offer they had made last month to Neal as a restricted free agent. The move makes the five-year veteran safety an unrestricted free agent available to sign with any team, instead of having a $2.67 million deal to stay with Seattle for the 2023 season.
The Seahawks rescinded their offer to Neal two weeks to the day after they signed Love as an unrestricted free agent from the Giants. A captain for New York last season, Love got a two-year deal worth up to $12 million to be Seattle’s new third safety with Pro Bowl veterans Quandre Diggs and Jamal Adams.
That used to be Neal’s job.
The money they gave Love and the newest Seahawk’s versatility won out in Carroll’s ongoing overhaul of Seattle’s defense.
Love is two years younger than the 27-year-old Neal. The Giants selected Love in the fourth round of the 2019 NFL draft. Since then he’s played as a deep safety in coverage, a strong safety against the run and a nickel defensive back inside against slot receivers when New York went to a fifth defensive back.
He started 16 games at safety for the Giants last season.
Carroll said last week at the NFL meetings the Seahawks’ plan for 2023 is to do what they were going to do with Diggs, Adams and Neal in 2022: Play three safeties at the same time, a lot — with Adams almost more a linebacker playing near the line of scrimmage as a pass rusher and to stop the run.
Adams tore his quadriceps tendon in the first half of the first game last September, blitzing in on Denver quarterback Russell Wilson. That made Neal the starting strong safety next to Diggs, playing for Adams the rest of last season. Carroll never got to employ his three-safety plan over the final 17 1/2 games of the season.
“I know there’s some conversation about what we did with Julian, does that have some impact on Jamal or Quandre? It doesn’t,” Carroll told reporters last week in Phoenix. “It doesn’t. We have a clear thought of what we’re going to do with our guys and how we want to play them, and we feel very fortunate to have all of our guys.”
Asked if the plan is to have Love, Diggs and Adams play together in 2023, Carroll said, “Oh yeah, absolutely. That’s what I’m saying.”
Maybe 25% of the defensive snaps?
“Oh no,” Carroll said. “They’ll play together a lot more than that.”
That made Neal expendable, even though Carroll loved how he went from formerly waived by Atlanta to scrapping onto Seattle’s special teams to a valued starter. Neal routinely made key tackles on third downs to get the Seahawks defense off the field the last two seasons.
“The opportunity to get Julian, who’s a remarkable player — he had a remarkable season last year. I can’t remember a guy who played over a thousand snaps and played over 200 snaps on special, as well. That’s an unusual mix,” Carroll said last week at the league meetings. “That’s just one aspect of what Julian brings.
“He’s a really versatile football player. He called their defenses; he had the green dot (on his helmet, denoting communications with the coaches through a helmet speaker). He’s a captain.
“It’s a very rare opportunity to get a guy like that, so we jumped at it. He can do a lot of things. He was a very dynamic player in their system, he did everything, from the front to the back. He’s a really good deep-end player, but he fits into the running the game and pressuring and all of those things. He’s a really complete football player. And also, the smarts that he brings, the leadership that he brings, he’s going to be a really good addition.”
It didn’t help Neal that he said in January he needed knee surgery this offseason. He called it a clean-up procedure. He played the final months of the 2022 season through knee pain.
Jamal Adams’ progress
Adams continues to recover from a tricky injury. Carroll said last week team medical and athletic-training staffers have seen Adams recently.
“It sounds really good,” the coach said. “We sent our guys out to see him about 10 days ago, and he’s coming in in the next couple of weeks too, so we’re keeping track. It sounds like he’s doing great. He’s pushing it, and he’s going to try to bust whatever projections that would keep him from not being ready for the start of the season. He’s looking to get that done, and we’re counting on it, hoping it.”
The coach isn’t sure if Adams will be back on the field for the start of training camp in late July.
“That’s not what the doctors are saying. They’re being more open, allowing more room for that to see what happens,” Carroll said. “We’ll see what happens. We’re going to be really optimistic about it but support him, and we’re not going to rush it.”
This story was originally published April 3, 2023 at 9:15 AM.
