Why the Seahawks traded with the Giants to get Leonard Williams for the defensive line
The first-place Seahawks just made a go-for-it move.
Seattle is acquiring $63 million defensive tackle Leonard Williams from the New York Giants and trading a second-round choice in the 2024 draft and a fifth-round pick in 2025. The Seahawks confirmed the trade Monday afternoon.
The trade thickens the Seahawks’ thinnest spot, interior defensive line, which the team did not do in this spring’s draft.
Tackle Jarran Reed has played more than 70% of snaps four times in seven games, including in the last three. The 30-year-old Reed played 58 of 78 snaps (74%) Sunday and had four tackles in Seattle’s comeback win over the Browns. End Dre’mont Jones, at a position Williams also plays, has been on the field for 64% of Seattle’s defensive snaps this season.
In the last two games, Arizona has rushed for 127 yards and Cleveland for 155 against Seattle’s previously strong run defense. The Seahawks (5-2) will get further tested on their defensive front Sunday when they play at the AFC North-leading Baltimore Ravens (6-2), and by the San Francisco 49ers when they meet twice in Seattle’s bid to winning the NFC West.
The Seahawks lead the division by a half game over the reeling 49ers (5-3).
When his Seahawks played Williams and the Giants in the New Jersey Meadowlands in early October, coach Pete Carroll said Williams was one of the best interior defensive linemen Seattle will face this season.
Williams has played over the center, over the guard and in the guard-tackle gap and, early in his NFL career with the Jets from 2015-19, defensive end. He was the Jets’ sixth-overall pick in the 2015 draft out of USC.
Reed has been playing up and down the line as a similarly versatile tackle on the interior of the Seahawks’ defensive line. But with only rookie Cameron Young and former practice-squad player Myles Adams as backup interior linemen, Reed and Jones need proven help.
Williams is that.
He is halfway through the final season of the three-year, $63 million deal the Giants gave him before the 2021 season. He got that months after he ended an 11 1/2-sack season for the Giants in 2020. New York is 2-6 and in last place in the NFC East, so it is thinking toward rebuilding for the future and not paying another mammoth contract to a veteran lineman who has the team’s highest salary-cap charge this year and will turn 30 next year.
The Seahawks got the Giants to agree to pay most of approximately $10 million left in base pay on Williams’ contract for the remainder of this season, ESPN.com’s Jordan Raanan reported. New York doing that is what got this deal done.
Williams, 29, could become a free agent in the spring.
The Seahawks had eight picks over seven rounds and two choices in the third round of next year’s draft That made it more palatable to give New York a second-rounder for Williams.
This is the fourth time in seven years general manager John Schneider has made a trade in October before the league’s trade deadline to bring a veteran starter to the Seahawks. The other three worked out: offensive tackle Duane Brown from Houston in 2017, safety Quandre Diggs from Detroit in 2019 and defensive end Carlos Dunlap from Cincinnati in 2020.
This story was originally published October 30, 2023 at 12:53 PM.
