Seahawks cut Nick Bellore
Seahawks make fifth and probably final cut: Seaside Joe 1835
It’s official, the Seattle Seahawks made their most notable change of 2024 by releasing Nick Bellore on Sunday. Bellore hung on the roster for almost an entire week after the Seahawks made their initial round of cuts, but may have decided he would rather look for a new team than accept a pay cut in Seattle where all the coaches are new.
For example, his former special teams coordinator Larry Izzo has joined Dan Quinn in Washington and they might need a special teams captain. Or Bellore will retire, as he’s 35.
Bellore could have earned up to $2.85 million in 2024 and that’s the amount that the Seahawks save against the cap by releasing him. We don’t have the final numbers on Tyler Lockett’s revised contract yet, but cutting Bellore gets Seattle to approximately $44.9 million in space going into free agency before getting to the vet receiver’s contract changes.
In my Seahawks free agency plan on March 1, I wrote that the team should release Quandre Diggs, Jamal Adams, Will Dissly, Bryan Mone, Nick Bellore, Tyler Lockett, and Dee Eskridge. The team released the first four of those names and then after hearing John Schneider say that they were hoping to avoid anymore cuts, I wrote that the team was likely waiting to see if Lockett would accept a pay cut. On Saturday night, Lockett took a pay cut.
Eskridge also accepted a pay cut to stay in Seattle, so with Bellore now added to the list that makes 7-of-7 contracts from the offseason plan addressed by the Seahawks with release or revisement.
What we are now waiting to find out is which outgoing Seattle players will be re-signed by the Seahawks prior to free agency, if any.
The revised Lockett contract should get the Seahawks to over $50 million in 2024 cap space (which, by the way, is what I wrote they would have in my offseason plan nine day ago) and presumably not all of it will be spent on new players but a lot of it could be. In my offseason plan, I targeted these names:
QB Drew Lock, LG Damien Lewis, TE Colby Parkinson, iOL Evan Brown, and RFA tenders for OLB Darrell Taylor, CB Mike Jackson.
Those will be the names we watch for next, but I didn’t have the team retaining Leonard Williams, Jordyn Brooks, Noah Fant, or Bobby Wagner. Schneider noted last week that the team is actively working to keep Williams. Which would not surprise me or upset me, just because I wrote in my plan that Williams could or would leave that doesn’t mean I’m rooting for a particular outcome. It depends on how important Mike Macdonald and Schneider feel Williams is to the Seahawks over the next three years and now they have plenty of cap space to use.
I’ve gotten some questions on Twitter for which outside free agents the Seahawks could target starting on Monday (official signings start Wednesday) and I’ve written a few articles on that topic already. Probably the most notable are the 4 “high-priced” names on the market that I’d find worth it, the free agent names I mentioned have a connection to a new Seahawks coach, and six targets from The Athletic’s list of the top-150 free agents.
There were rumors—just rumors—of Seattle’s interest in linebacker Patrick Queen (which is nothing new) and Panthers safety Jeremy Chinn (which is new). Chinn is 26 but spent half of last season as a backup, apparently not a good fit for the Ejiro Evero defense in Carolina, so he’s still young and potentially cheap and with the safety market being depreciated it is an opportunity to get a few players in to compete for the Macdonald defense.
The Seahawks will have more news—potentially more big news on Sunday if any players are re-signed or traded—so make sure you are subscribed to Seaside Joe for the free or premium newsletter to not miss anything.
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I can see why MM might be interested in Williams who has shown some positional flexibility along the DL. I noted SSJ's stats on run D before/after Williams was added and there was not much change, but put him on the field with everyone healthy in MM's scheme and it could be a much different story. Williams' "want to" was apparant when he was on the field.
Staton is having a cow over supposed negligence that left Schneider with almost no cap room prior to the cuts. My take is that almost every team sooner or later winds up having to make cuts, and that in the event Seattle didn’t cut anyone they wanted to retain. Admittedly, that every team winds up in this boat sooner or later is supposition on my part. Seaside, what do you think about this?