Easop Winston, other Seahawks with the most at stake in the preseason finale at Green Bay
Easop Winston Jr. carried the ball he caught for his first NFL touchdown everywhere that night.
He carried it from the end zone where he caught the scoring pass from Drew Lock two weeks ago to the sideline, for in-game safekeeping. He carried it from the bench area into the Seahawks’ locker room following Seattle’s win over Minnesota in the first preseason game. Then he carried the football from his locker to an interview room. For the first time in his career, he was a featured speaker in an NFL postgame press conference.
“I’m giving this to my mom,” Winston said.
Renee Winston had to have been beaming. She once told the Cougar Sports Network when Winston was playing in college for Washington State that “from fifth grade to the 12th grade, he slept with the football every night.”
“This is my first touchdown in the NFL, and it’s my fourth year,” her son said Aug. 10. “This is a big moment for me. And she sacrificed a lot for me, so I think it’s only right that I give it to her.”
Saturday at famed Lambeau Field, Winston is trying to give Mom an even bigger gift: a full-time roster spot to start this Seahawks season.
The former Cougars wide receiver is in the middle of Seattle’s muddled roster situation entering its final preseason game, against the Packers in Green Bay Saturday (10 a.m., channel 5).
It’s the latest biggest game of Winston’s NFL career.
It’s a throw-away exhibition game for established starters such as Bobby Wagner, Quandre Diggs, Geno Smith, DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett. But Saturday is massive to the 45 or so players on Seattle’s 90-man roster in danger of not having jobs next week.
“This is really important,” coach Pete Carroll said of his team’s only road game this preseason, before the Seahawks departed for Wisconsin Friday.
Injuries to rookie first-round draft choice Jaxon Smith-Njigba, veteran Cody Thompson, Dareke Young and Cade Johnson have opened opportunities for Winston and two undrafted rookies to win one or two wide-receiver spots left. The Seahawks must set their initial 53-man roster for this season by Tuesday’s league deadline to cut from 90 players.
Winston was soaring after his touchdown catch two weeks ago against the Vikings.
“I feel very comfortable. It just feels like home,” he said. “Obviously, I’m a Coug, so I’ve been in Seattle a bunch of times.
“I never thought I’d be here (with the Seahawks). But I am now, and it’s been great ever since I stepped foot into the facility.”
But the following week he injured his groin. He missed practices, the second preseason game last weekend against Dallas, and daily opportunities to show coaches why he should be on the team to begin the season.
Saturday is his last chance.
Winston knows more than undrafted rookies Jake Bobo and Matt Landers, among his competitors for these final roster spots, what the next days will be like into cut day Tuesday.
They will be excruciating.
Winston has been cut by four teams in three years. That’s since he signed out of WSU as a rookie free agent with the Los Angeles Rams in the spring of 2020.
The Rams cut him at the end of that preseason. He played the only three NFL regular-season games of his career in 2021 with New Orleans. The Saints cut him in training camp in 2022. Cleveland claimed him off waivers. The Browns released him two weeks later, at the end of last preseason.
The native of South San Francisco signed onto Seattle’s practice squad last October. The Seahawks released him this spring. They signed him back days later for offseason practices.
Wide receiver situation
Carroll last year kept six wide receivers on his initial regular-season roster. The last three must play special teams. Winston does that, including as a kick returner.
Bobo appears to have the fourth wide-receiver spot. The rookie free agent from UCLA and Duke has been a star of training camp and the two games. He’s among the NFL’s leading receivers this preseason.
That leaves Winston, Johnson, undrafted rookie Matt Landers from Arkansas and the currently injured Thompson leading a pack of four others trying to win the fifth and sixth wide-receiver spots.
Johnson is also trying to make up for lost time. He missed last week’s preseason game after he was taken from the preseason opener to Harborview Medical Center on a stretcher with his head and neck immobilized. He’s recovered from a concussion. He will return punts and play receiver for Lock and fellow backup quarterback Holton Ahlers at Green Bay Saturday.
Landers will play, too. He missed practices this week with a leg injury. He is 6 feet 4 with 4.37-second speed in the 40-yard dash. He needs a good game Saturday on punts, kickoffs and offense to push for his place.
Young was away from the team this week seeking medical opinions on whether he needs abdominal surgery. He may begin the season on an injured list.
Thompson won’t play because of a shoulder injury. If he’s not fully healthy, he could begin the season on injured reserve after making the initial 53-man roster. That would sideline him a minimum of four games. Players put on IR before the initial 53-man roster is set miss the entire season, per league rules.
If the Seahawks feel Thompson can get healthy to play by the opening game Sept. 10 and that they can get the wide receiver who first joined the team in 2019 through waivers Tuesday into Wednesday, he may begin the season on the practice squad. If they fear losing Thompson to waivers, he’ll be on the initial roster.
That’s the same can-he-get-through-waivers calculus Carroll and general manager John Schneider are doing now into Tuesday with Winston, Landers, Johnson and others.
Schneider sees his team as 69 players, not just 53. That’s because of the 16-man practice squad with rules the NFL liberalized in recent years enabling practice-squad players to easily play in games each week.
Winston knows all this. All too well.
“I just want to keep it going,” he said, “and put my best foot forward.”
Crowded secondary
Jamal Adams came off the physically-unable-to-perform list this week. But the $70 million safety has much more to prove coming back from his torn quadriceps tendon before the Seahawks know when he will be playing again. It’s likely he’s on the initial regular-season roster to keep practicing for a season debut in week two or three, if then.
Coby Bryant, the team’s nickel cornerback last season, moving to backup safety makes the position crowded. Undrafted rookie Jonathan Sutherland was on the first-team defense at nickel and safety last week. Then he got hurt. He didn’t practice this week. He is unlikely to play in Green Bay. That hurts Sutherland’s chance to make the team, at least while not on an injured list to begin the season.
Rookie sixth-round draft pick Jerrick Reed from New Mexico is no roster lock, not with 2022 undrafted rookie surprise Joey Blount back this week from injury. Blount and Reed have a lot at stake Saturday against the Packers.
Devon Witherspoon’s hamstring injury that’s had the fifth pick in this year’s draft out the last two weeks puts some uncertainty in Seattle’s deep cornerback position.
If Witherspoon proves in morning walkthrough practices next week he is on track to be ready for the opener, he will likely be the primary nickel defensive back inside to begin the season. That’s where he moved in early August from left cornerback, before he got hurt.
Riq Woolen is all the way back from his arthroscopic knee surgery. He will start again at right cornerback. He was Seattle’s Pro Bowl rookie there last season. At left cornerback, Tre Brown took the lead over 2022 starter Michael Jackson in last week’s game and practices this week.
Carroll and Seahawks coaches love Jackson’s rugged tackling and determination. It’s likely both Brown and Jackson are on the initial regular-season roster. That spells trouble for veteran Artie Burns’ roster chances. The former first-round pick by Pittsburgh is likely to play a lot Saturday.
He and other veterans know Saturday’s preseason finale is as important not just for the team a guy is currently on, but one he may want and need to be hearing from come Tuesday.
“You’re not just playing for this organization. You’re playing for 31 other organizations,” Mario Edwards said.
Seattle’s new starting defensive end, a former second-round pick by the Raiders, has played for five teams and been let go by five teams in his eight-year career.
The Seahawks’ defensive line he’s now on is dangerously thin and unproven behind starters Edwards, Dre’Mont Jones and new nose tackle Jarran Reed. Seattle is likely to sign two defensive tackles in the next week, after 900-plus players become available with Tuesday’s league-wide cuts. It remains this team’s weakest position, coming off a 2022 season when the Seahawks had the league’s 30th-ranked run defense.
“What you put on tape is what they’re going to have,” Edwards said of Saturday in Green Bay. “You can either continue your career and be three, four, five, or nine years like me. Or it can go a different way.
“Make sure you put what you want to see on film.”
This story was originally published August 25, 2023 at 1:43 PM.
