Seahawks need defensive-line help. They need a guy like...Leonard Williams. But: The cost
As Mike Macdonald begins his rebuild of the Seahawks’ bottom-ranked defense, the new coach could use a long, strong lineman.
The defensive wizard from Baltimore could use a versatile pass rusher. Or three. He could use a run stopper who can play inside closer to the center and outside near tackles.
Seattle’s defense that sank to 30th overall in the NFL, and 31st in rushing defense, in 2023 could use all that. And more.
The Seahawks sure could use Leonard Williams.
Nicknamed “Big Cat” because he’s 6 feet 5 and 300 pounds yet has feline-like quickness, Williams is so much what the Seahawks need that in October general manager John Schneider traded Seattle’s second-round pick in this spring’s draft to the Giants to acquire Williams. New York exacted that high a price to trade its $63 million tackle to the Seahawks partly because the Giants agreed to pay a bulk of Williams’ cost for the final 10 games of last season.
Upon Williams’ arrival in Seattle in October, then-coach Pete Carroll called the man he already knew as Leo “a rare player.”
It was a go-for-it move by Schneider.
Seattle didn’t get it.
The Seahawks began the season 6-3 and were in first place in the NFC West soon after Williams joined the team. But Seattle won just three of its final eight games. The team missed the playoffs for only the third time in 12 years.
Now, Williams is the most coveted of the 14 Seahawks poised to become unrestricted free agents. Those veterans eyeing the market opening with negotiations starting March 11: Williams, Bobby Wagner, Jordyn Brooks, Noah Fant, Evan Brown, Artie Burns, Devin Bush, Mario Edwards, DeeJay Dallas, Damien Lewis, Phil Haynes, Drew Lock, Colby Parkinson and Jason Peters.
In particular, Wagner’s and Brooks’ futures with Seattle as its inside linebackers are in major doubt.
Williams’ is less so.
Will Seattle re-sign Williams before he gets to the open market?
Multiple signs say no. Including what Williams has said about it.
Leonard Williams seeks his market value
In mid-December, six games into his time with the Seahawks, Williams talked about adjusting to Carroll’s defensive scheme. It was new to him. So were his teammates and the city of Seattle, after his 5-1/2 years playing for New York’s NFL teams.
As he talked then he was on his way to finishing the 2023 season with four sacks, 15 quarterback pressures, 11 QB hits, 41 tackles, only two missed tackles and nine stops for a loss while playing 76% of defensive snaps in his 10 Seahawks games.
Oddly, he didn’t have a bye week last season. He got traded before the Giants’ bye, and after Seattle’s. He became the first NFL player since 1930 to play 18 games in a season.
The News Tribune asked Williams late in that grind if he’d like to play in Seattle in 2024 and beyond.
“I mean, it’s hard to say,” Williams said at his locker before a practice Dec. 14, days before the Seahawks ended a four-game losing streak. “I never like to guarantee anything. Just let the future play out. Handle in the moment. And right now that’s just my play and focusing on my play day by day, focusing on my assignment.
“Like I said, I try not to focus on a possible outcome that is not guaranteed.”
That’s definitely not “yes.”
Williams has reason to want to test free agency. His value is likely to be near the top of the market for defensive tackles.
He’s still just 29. This is his first chance at free agency; the Giants gave him a franchise tag twice to keep him off the market, before they signed him to the $63 million, three-year deal Seattle inherited the end of.
A Pro Bowl selection in 2016, after the Jets made him the sixth pick in the 2015 draft, Williams has averaged 7.8 sacks his last three full seasons played. He had started 114 consecutive games until a sprained knee and strained neck in 2022 caused him to miss five Giants games. His pressure rate on quarterbacks in 2023 was above 10% for his first time since 2020.
Pro Football Focus, to which many teams subscribe for scouting analytics, rates Williams as the fourth-best interior defensive lineman and 16th-best player overall in next month’s free-agent market. The free-agent defensive tackles PFF rates above Williams: Kansas City’s Chris Jones, Baltimore’s Justin Madubuike (whom Macdonald coached the last two seasons) and Miami’s Christian Wilkins.
All that, plus the Giants having put a franchise tag on him twice, give Williams leverage to drive up his free-agent price — past what the Seahawks can afford.
The Seahawks’ salary-cap math
Seattle is about $5.2 million over the league salary cap for 2024, per estimates from overthecap.com. The team needs to get under the cap by cutting or restructuring veteran contracts by March 13.
Tuesday began the league’s 15-day window in which teams can use franchise and transition tags to keep players from entering free agency. It ends March 5.
A tag appears far too expense for the Seahawks to use to keep Williams.
Article 10, section 2(b) of the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement with its players states guys getting a franchise tag for a third time are to receive a tender of a one-year contract at 144% of his prior-year salary.
The NFL computes prior-year salary to include a player’s base pay (Williams’ was $18 million in 2023) plus any bonuses and the prorated amount of his signing bonus across the life of the deal, up to five years. Williams’ signing bonus with the Giants on his expiring contract was $22.5 million, prorated at $7.5 million per each of the three years on his deal.
Williams’ franchise-tag value would be 144% of $25.5 million ($18 million salary plus $7.5 million bonus proration), his prior-year salary. That’s a guaranteed one-year contract of $36.72 million. That would be more than $6.5 million above Seattle’s highest existing cap charge for 2024, for Pro Bowl quarterback Geno Smith.
That’s not happening.
The less-expensive transition tag isn’t viable for Seattle, either. (The less-common transition tag is the tool to keep players from free agency that does not give the tagging team top draft-pick compensation if it decides not to match a competing offer sheet, as franchise tags do)
The transition-tag cost is Williams’ case of being tagged for the third time would be 120% of his previous-year salary, $30.6 million. That’s still above Smith’s scheduled cap charge for 2024.
The Seahawks do have time to re-sign Williams to a multi-year contract, avoiding all the tag business, before free agency begins in three weeks. They just don’t have the money.
Williams isn’t likely to agree to an average annual contract value for much less than what the franchise-tag value is for defensive tackles (who haven’t been tagged before) this year. That’s expected to be $20.9 million.
Williams just had an average annual pay of $21 million on his ending contract. Unless Schneider, Macdonald and new defensive coordinator Aden Durde are willing to — and can — pull a sell job worth the Seahawks hiring them already, Williams not likely to take a pay cut and miss out on his first chance at the open free-agent market to re-sign with the Seahawks.
Schneider, Macdonald and Durde may have to rely on having older Jarran Reed entering the final year of his contract, hoping for development by 2023 draft pick Cameron Young in his second NFL season and using some of their seven picks in April’s draft to get better where they must: on the interior defensive line.
Macdonald sounds up for the task.
“We’re going to have a lot of fun. We’re going to work our tails off, and it’s going to be an incredible ride,” the 36-year-old former Baltimore Ravens defensive coordinator told Seahawks employees upon being greeted by team vice chair Bert Kolde, president Chuck Arnold in the new coach’s first moments inside team headquarters last month.
“We’re going to be here for a long time,” Macdonald said, “and we’re going to win a lot of football games.”
This story was originally published February 21, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
