Seattle signs Jerome Baker; younger, cheaper at linebacker. Will Seahawks be better there?
Through the first week of free agency, the Seahawks have gotten what every team seeks to get, at every position.
Younger — and cheaper — at linebacker.
Time will tell if they got better.
They let future Hall of Fame middle linebacker Bobby Wagner leave to sign with Washington. They let Jordyn Brooks, their former first-round draft choice, sign with Miami, also this week.
In response, they’ve signed Dolphins 2023 starting linebacker Jerome Baker to a one-year, $7 million free-agent contract. The Seahawks made the deal official for the 27-year-old Baker Saturday afternoon.
It came two days after Seattle signed 25-year-old former Buffalo linebacker Tyrel Dodson.
Baker was once a $37 million starter for the Dolphins. He and Miami couldn’t come to an agreement on a lower salary and renegotiated contract for 2024. So the this month the Dolphins released their 2017 third-round pick from Ohio State. That saved them $9.8 million in space under the NFL salary cap.
The Seahawks signed him after Baker visited with the Seahawks on Friday. That was after he had made free-agent visits with the Tennessee Titans, among other teams.
A secondary matter but a pertinent one to Seahawks draft-conscious general manager John Schneider: Because the Dolphins cut Baker with a year remaining on his contract, his signing does not count against Seattle in the formula the league uses to determine compensatory picks in the 2025 draft from net free-agent losses in 2024.
The Seahawks remain in line for the NFL-maximum four comp picks in next year’s draft: a fourth-round choice for losing left guard Damien Lewis in a free-agent deal with Carolina, a fifth-rounder for losing Brooks, and sixth-round picks for losing Wagner and tight end Colby Parkinson (to the Los Angeles Rams).
Wagner, 33, and Brooks, 26, were the inside linebackers last season on a Seahawks defense that finished ranked 30th in the 32-team NFL last season.
Baker and Dodson represent the new era of Seahawks football that will continue to take shape in next month’s draft. Because both signed short-term contracts, their deals don’t preclude Seattle from selecting off-the-ball linebackers with one (or some) of its seven choices in this year’s draft.
Former coach Pete Carroll, Seattle’s final football authority the last 14 years until his firing in January after the team’s non-playoff season of 2023, had allegiances and relationships with Wagner and Brooks that ran deep.
Schneider took top authority from Carroll when team chair Jody Allen and vice chair Bert Kolde fired the NFL’s oldest coach three days after the end of Seattle’s 9-8 season in January.
Schneider hired Mike Macdonald, the defensive coordinator for the Baltimore Ravens’ top-ranked defense last season, to replace Carroll.
Macdonald, at 36 half Carroll’s age, has zero allegiances and relationships with Wagner and Brooks. Or Jamal Adams, Quandre Diggs, Will Dissly and other expensive Seahawks veterans whom the team has released in the last month.
This story was originally published March 16, 2024 at 5:42 PM.
