LEONARD WILLIAMS TRADED TO SEAHAWKS

Seahawks trade for Leonard Williams, what it cost and what it means: Seaside Joe 1702

I had to check the news multiple times from different resources before believing it was true, but the Seattle Seahawks are trading a 2024 second round pick and 2025 fifth round pick to the New York Giants for defensive lineman Leonard Williams. The trade comes on the heels of putting Uchenna Nwosu on IR and signing Frank Clark, but is ultimately more related to the Seahawks getting bigger and better on the defensive line so it is possible that Seattle had this move in mind for months.

The Seahawks give up their second round pick next year in order to rent Leonard Williams, a 2024 free agent, for the final 10 games of the season, but Seattle will probably get a 2025 third round compensatory pick if he signs somewhere else in the upcoming offseason.

The financial implications here would be significant, as Williams is playing on an $18 million base salary (that means he’s owed over $10 million for the rest of the season), except that New York agreed to pay “a large portion” of his contract per Ian Rapoport in order to get back a better draft pick. That’s since been said to be basically everything he’s owed and Seattle only pays the remaining vet minimum, which is less than $1 million for the Seahawks.

Read Next: 7 GOOD reasons the Seahawks traded for Leonard Williams

Williams, the sixth overall pick of the 2015 draft, has 21 tackles, 1.5 sacks, 5 QB hits, and 1 tackle for a loss in eight games with the Giants this season. He set a career-high in 2020 when he had 11.5 sacks in Patrick Graham/Joe Judge’s defense but seemingly hasn’t been as good of a fit for Wink Martindale since he took over in 2022. Williams had just 2.5 sacks in 12 games last season.

An exceptional athlete when the Jets drafted him out of USC, Williams made the Pro Bowl in his second season but fell out of favor and in fact was traded for a lower return in 2019 (third and fifth round picks) when he was 25 than what the Seahawks gave up to get him on Monday; Williams turns 30 next June.

We could turn blue talking about how Leonard Williams has played in the last couple of seasons but that seems irrelevant to me because he’s no longer playing with Martindale’s Giants and instead the only thing that matters is how he fits with Dre’Mont Jones, Jarran Reed, and Mario Edwards on Clint Hurtt’s Seahawks. That sounds…really good.

The Seahawks have now rebuilt their entire defensive line in less than a year, going from Poona Ford, Quinton Jefferson, Al Woods, Shelby Harris, Bryan Mone, and Myles Adams to Jones, Williams, Reed, Edwards, Adams, and Cameron Young. Seattle has also gone from allowing 4.9 yards per carry and totaling 45 sacks in 17 games to allowing 3.6 yards per carry and being on pace for 63 sacks.

And that was before Leonard Williams.

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If you had asked me before the trade made me biased to “like” and root for Leonard Williams, I would have said that I’ve never been a huge fan of him. Similar to Jadeveon Clowney, it seems to me that the draft has been too influential on public perception of his overall value.

However, it’s hard to not imagine that he could be the best version of himself on Pete Carroll’s defense and playing next to Jones and Reed.

This is the same Pete Carroll who acquired and got the best out of defensive linemen like Clinton McDonald, Tony McDaniel, Michael Bennett, Cliff Avril, and Chris Clemons. As well as inheriting the likes of Brandon Mebane and Red Bryant and making them so much better. There have been less successful acquisitions, including Sheldon Richardson and Ezekiel Ansah, which aren’t pieces of the past we should ignore.

However, at the cost of a second round pick—probably no higher than the 50s—and knowing that either Seattle really likes him and re-signs him (which is worth more than a second round pick) or lets him go and gets a compensatory pick (which isn’t that much less valuable than what they gave up) then this is a move that the Seahawks had to make with the opportunity.

I imagine that the Seahawks will play Williams as soon as this Sunday against the Baltimore Ravens and though Seattle isn’t likely to make another move before Tuesday’s trade deadline, they didn’t give up enough to guarantee that they won’t.

Read Next: 7 GOOD reasons the Seahawks traded for Leonard Williams