Coby Bryant free agency
The upside and downside to re-signing Coby Bryant
Would you re-sign a safety after he had seven interceptions, allowed a passer rating of 63.8, and is only going to be 25 at the start of the next season? Because the Ravens didn’t keep Geno Stone after his second season with Mike Macdonald when it seemed like he was just starting to break out, and neither did Macdonald implore John Schneider to bring him to the Seahawks as a free agent two years ago.
You never want to presume that “this guy” is just like “that guy” because of “that other guy”, but here the comparison might make just enough sense to believe that Seattle won’t be bringing back Coby Bryant.
The upside
In coverage, Bryant has never had better production than 2025.
Making a career-high 15 starts and playing 977 snaps (almost 200 more than 2024), Bryant intercepted four passes and was only blamed for one touchdown as the nearest defender.
He also had a forced fumble and a career-high seven passes defensed.
If the Seahawks re-sign Bryant it means that they have no questions about their starting 2-deep safeties for the next couple of years, at least. Keeping Bryant would all seem so cut and dry if not for the fact that it isn’t.
The downside
As I alluded to in the beginning, Macdonald’s “Coby” in Baltimore was even better in 2023, intercepting SEVEN passes over 951 snaps and deflecting nine passes for the Ravens alongside Kyle Hamilton and Marcus Williams. The setup between Stone to Hamilton/Williams is almost identical to Bryant’s Emmanwori/Love.
And what happened there?
The Bengals gave Stone a two-year, $14 million contract in free agency and the first season went so bad that Cincinnati asked him to give back money for 2025 and he agreed.
There were signs and context clues of the potential to disappoint:
A missed tackle rate of 11.7%
Neither his old team or his old DC wanted to sign him
Now compare that to the missed tackle rate by Coby Bryant this season: 21.4%, third-worst overall the worst by a safety.
Although Bryant didn’t miss many tackles in 2024, he did have a high missed tackle rate in 2023 (18%), making it two of the last three years and that’s a reason to believe he might have a tackling issue.
There’s also “the Ty Okada factor”, which is a fancy way of saying that the Seahawks also have Ty Okada.
The downside with keeping Bryant is that no matter how reasonable his contract demands appear to be, like if he was asking for $8 million per year to stay with Seattle, that would still be $7 million more than having Okada do the job next season. And we know that Okada can do the job.
If you put personal feelings and affection for the person aside (it’s not as though Ravens fans didn’t love Geno Stone too), the player is just too replaceable to not expect the Seahawks to get cheaper and younger at safety next season.
The Prediction: Seahawks wish Coby luck—maybe with the Raiders
If Las Vegas is going to try and steal more secret sauce from Seattle like they have been doing since last year, a free agent contract for Bryant would make sense as the next step in free agency.
The Seahawks will give Okada the exclusive rights free agent tag (which pays $1 million) and continue to hold his rights for a couple more years; Okada’s missed tackle rate was 4.4%.
Given that Seattle has already made a financial investment into Julian Love (even he’s only one year older than Coby) and a draft pick investment into Nick Emmanwori and Macdonald has proven that he can turn players like Stone, Bryant, and Okada into playmakers at safety, there’s no non-emotional reason to re-sign Coby Bryant.
As I wrote several times last year: It is typically only the elite tier of safeties who end up signing extensions with the team that drafted them.
Because teams feel it is too easy to recycle safeties with cheaper, younger investments and that is probably what will happen in this case. Seattle drafts another safety in 2026 and if Bryant’s next contract is anywhere close to $10 million AAV then the Seahawks might get a 5th round comp for losing him in free agency.
I’m not anti-Coby Bryant, that’s just how these situations play out 90% of the time.
But then again, nothing is ever set in Stone.
Ha!! There it is: "Nothing is ever set in Stone". Smiled immediately dude, recognize you a mile away (or 10,000 miles away).
To the point at hand: maybe you can do at some point a thought piece on depth. I think (but could be wrong on this) that Seattle had two VERY valuable things this year that we prob need again if we plan to double down on Super Bowls:
- we didn't have a terrible year injuries-wise
- we had above-average depth
That's the conundrum for me. You can let Coby go because you have a nearly equal guy behind him who's cheaper (Okada who I love) and MacDonald will drum up another Okada. Or do you also need to keep your bench in place. Virtually impossible for SB-winning teams bc their guys automatically get viewed as better/more valuable than before they won a SB (whether or not it's actually true). But I feel great about our safeties (don't consider Emmanwori a safety per se, is more of a jack of all trades) bc we have Love/Coby/Okada -- and Okada had to back up both of them when either of them went down. That's why it worked. Can we let that be broken up and survive a 20-game season?
The other thing for whenever you have the time would be cool to explore is the track record of post-SB winning players who leverage the SB win into fat contracts on their own team or elsewhere -- how many of those ended up being a good investment?
What vacation? You are a machine and I am one of the beneficiaries. Your daily record is amazing Ken. Thanks