Jordyn Brooks ponders if Sunday’s game at Arizona may be his last with the Seahawks
Officially, the team listed him as “questionable” to play.
Whatever.
There was no way Jordyn Brooks was going to miss the Seahawks’ regular-season finale. And not just because they had to win Sunday at Arizona to have any possibility of making the playoffs.
The linebacker wasn’t going to sit for a second consecutive game because of an ankle injury that also limited him some in practices this past week.
“It’s important (that I play). For a number of reasons,” Brooks said before he started next to Bobby Wagner again in the middle of Seattle’s defense Sunday.
“Not knowing the future here, this might be my last time suiting up with these guys.”
It’s rare in the NFL that players with expiring contracts are as forthright as Brooks was this week about not knowing his future. He volunteered it, while answering the question: Why was it important that he grind through his ankle pain to play in the 17th and final game of the season?
The Seahawks entered Sunday 8-8, needing a victory over the Cardinals plus the Chicago Bears at the same time to upset the Packers in Green Bay to get the NFC’s final wild-card playoff spot for a postseason game this coming week.
He knew a sixth loss in eight games to end the season for the Seahawks, or a Packers win over the Bears, and Brooks’ rookie contract would be over.
Seattle drafted him in the first round in 2020. The team decided by the NFL deadline in May not to exercise his fifth-year option the league has for all first-round picks. The option would have guaranteed Brooks $12.72 million for the 2024 season.
This past spring, nothing was guaranteed for Brooks. He was only a couple months removed from reconstructive knee surgery.
Coach Pete Carroll, general manager John Schneider and the Seahawks were so unsure Brooks would be able to play much of this season, if at all, they signed 3-4 inside linebacker Devin Bush in free agency from Pittsburgh. They gave Bush a one-year contract at $3 million guaranteed.
It was insurance if Brooks took the normal nine-to-12 months to return from his torn anterior cruciate ligament. He got hurt on New Year’s Day 2023, in a game against the New York Jets.
Remarkably, Brooks made it back in 7 1/2 months. He started the opening game of this season.
He absolutely didn’t bull through his knee rehabilitation and rush back to stand on the sideline in a sweatsuit wearing a ski mask over his face for Seattle’s final two games of this season. That’s what he did on New Year’s Eve. Brooks watched Bush play for him while the Steelers steamrolled Seattle’s defense for 202 yards rushing on 46 carries.
The 30-23 home loss to Pittsburgh cost the Seahawks control of their playoff fate.
Assessing Jordyn Brooks’ value
Carroll and Schneider have a decision to make with Brooks for 2024.
He set a franchise record with 184 tackles and a league-leading 109 solo in 2021. That was as an outside linebacker in Carroll’s old 4-3 scheme.
Last season, Brooks moved inside when Carroll moved to more of a 3-4 style with outside linebackers Uchenna Nwosu and Boye Mafe more as edge pass rushers than Brooks. Brooks took Wagner’s job and called the defensive signals after Wagner got cut and left to Los Angeles for his only season playing for the Rams.
Upon Wagner’s return to Seattle for this season, Brooks returned from his knee injury. He started the first 15 games. He had 109 tackles, 4 1/2 sacks, an interception and a fumble recovery in 15 games. Then he injured his ankle in the first quarter of the Seahawks’ win at Tennessee on Christmas Eve.
As Carroll, Schneider and defensive coordinator Clint Hurtt assess Brooks’ value and feasibility to retain for 2024, they will know that before Sunday’s game opponents rushed for 337 yards in seven quarters of play when Brooks was out with the ankle injury.
They will also be weighing what to do about Wagner. He turns 34 during next season. Seattle’s captain was selected to the Pro Bowl team for the ninth time this past week (to tie Russell Wilson’s and Hall of Famer Walter Jones’ franchise record). Wagner’s contract also ends with this end of this season.
Wagner said this past week he “100%” is playing next season, for someone. The six-time All-Pro who’s earned $5.5 million for this season said his thinking about whether he will play next season for Seattle is to “let the cards fall where they may.”
Asked if he and the team want Wagner to play for the Seahawks next season, Carroll said Wednesday: “I would hope. Yes. We would love to have him.”
The factors with Jordyn Brooks
Something has to change with Seattle’s defense.
It ranked 30th in the NFL in rushing defense in the 2022 season. It entered Sunday ranked...30th in the league in rushing defense.
Will a change be both the linebackers in the middle?
It depends how much Carroll and Schneider decide to spend on Brooks.
The top-paid inside linebackers in the league for the 2023 season have been Baltimore’s Roquan Smith at $20 million, San Francisco’s Fred Warner at $19.05 million and Chicago’s Tremaine Edmunds at $18 million. That’s per Spotrac.
The seventh-highest paid inside linebacker this season has been Green Bay’s De’Vondre Campbell, at $10 million.
The Seahawks may be willing to offer Brooks a multiyear contract at an average of less than $12 million per year, what would have been his fifth-year option cost for 2024 had the team picked that up.
Of course, the Seahawks know now what they didn’t know last spring: Brooks is back and playing well from his major knee injury.
It’s not as if Carroll or Schneider or anyone else with the team has given Brooks any indication of their thinking for his future. Brooks said he hasn’t heard anything.
“That’s later,” Brooks said this past week. “We’ll find out, I guess, after the season.
“I’m not going to say it doesn’t matter. Obviously, it matters. But I have to do this part first (returning from injury again Sunday in Arizona). Then we’ll focus on that.
“That’s been my mindset all year.”
Brooks said the Seahawks not picking up his option, his contract ending with the end of the 2023 season and his 2024 being unsettled were not on his mind as he fiendishly rehabbed from his knee reconstruction all winter, spring into last summer.
“To be honest, no. I’m being serious,” he said. “What was on my mind was redemption, honestly.
“I didn’t feel like last year was my best, for a lot of reasons. I kind of wanted to do redeem that from (the 2022 season), as far as making impact plays, you know, overall game.
“I feel like I’ve done that,” Brooks said, with a nod of his head.
“I really do.”
This story was originally published January 6, 2024 at 9:50 PM.
