Seahawks embracing youth movement

Seattle's roster reflects change in team building to keep up with the times

Look at the Seahawks offensive depth chart and what’s the first thing you notice?

Youth. And that’s with me cutting off fourth-string tight end Nick Kallerup because he was the only player on a fourth-string, which felt like an unnecessary use of space on the screenshot.

The Seahawks carry 11 rookies into the 2025 season, including eight on offense and three on defense:

If this does not seem like a big deal to you — and “big deal” doesn’t connote good or bad, it’s just notable — consider Seattle’s history of final 53-man roster ages in the last few seasons of Pete Carroll.

Every year at this time, Philly Voice calculates the average age of all 32 rosters and this time the Seahawks checked in as tied for being the fourth-youngest:

And I don’t know about the Bengals and Cowboys, but the Seahawks got even younger after final cuts by claiming 25-year-old Derion Kendrick and releasing 30-year-old Shaquill Griffin so Seattle should now be ranked third.

This may not always be the case, but average age is often a symptom of a larger organizational philosophy and I can assume that because the Packers have had the youngest roster in the NFL for three years in a row. Whereas we can assume some teams are consistently young because they are bad, clearly that is not always the case when you see Green Bay and the Philadelphia Eagles consistently chop off their oldest players and replace them with rookies.

It is possible that the Seahawks did not do enough chopping in the final years of the Carroll era:

• 2019: Average age 25.5 (4th youngest)

• 2020: 26.2 (25th)

• 2021: 26.4 (26th)

• 2022: 26.1 (25th)

• 2023: 25.5 (5th)

• 2024: 25.98 (13th)

• 2025: 25.77 (t4th)

The Seahawks made a very obvious shift in 2022, but the ramifications of “the trade” didn’t appear on this list until 2023. That team was still carrying players like Al Woods, Nick Bellore, Marquise Goodwin, Gabe Jackson, and Shelby Harris.

By the next year, all of those players were gone except for Bellore, although Bobby Wagner did return for one season at age 33.

Still, Carroll was not letting as many over-27 guys sneak on the roster in 2023 — maybe a last ditch attempt to earn favor and/or trust with ownership if he felt the hot seat — and although a shift of 0.6 years seems small, it was indicative of Seattle’s new philosophy to trust players they were picking in the draft.

Such as starting bookend rookie tackles in 2022. And a cornerbacks room, edge room, and running backs room that all had two starters/key players who were drafted in 2022 or 2023.

• Walker/Charbonnet

• Woolen/Witherspoon

• Mafe/Hall

Maybe too little, too late for Carroll, but John Schneider and Mike Macdonald have not pulled back the reins on the youth movement just because they missed the playoffs in 2024. If anything, they’ve pushed harder:

• Replace Geno Smith with Sam Darnold (-7 years)

• Replace Tyler Lockett with Tory Horton (-11 years)

• Replace Laken Tomlinson with Grey Zabel (-10 years)

• Replace Noah Fant with Elijah Arroyo (-6 years)

• Replace Rayshawn Jenkins with Nick Emmanwori (-10 years)

The Seahawks also made other decisions this week like cutting Marquez Valdes-Scantling to keep someone like Cody White and swapping out Griffin for Kendrick.

Even accounting for Seattle’s additions of Cooper Kupp (5 years older than DK Metcalf) and DeMarcus Lawrence (5 years older than Dre’Mont Jones), the Seahawks still got younger overall, especially where it counts. And yeah the Seahawks added those “old” players, but they also kept two undrafted rookie free agents behind Lawrence and they have FIVE young receivers around Kupp.

By far the oldest part of the roster is the defensive line, featuring Leonard Williams (31), Jarran Reed (33), Lawrence (33), and Uchenna Nwosu (29).

It seems like Julian Love is now the elder statesman of the secondary and he’s only 27!

This youth movement is what I would call a result of “youth stacking”. Check out how many players on the current 53-man roster have been rookies since 2022:

• 2022: 7 rookies on the 2022 roster are still on the 53

• 2023: 11 rookies on the 2023 roster are still on the 53

• 2024: 7 rookies on the 2024 roster are still on the 53*

• 2025: 11 rookies on the 2025 roster

*Christian Haynes is not on the 53, but he is on the team’s IR

That’s a total of 35 players on the 53-man roster, not including Haynes, who have been Seahawks rookies since 2022.

That is 66% of the roster.

This does not include players who have been rookies on other teams since 2022 and are now on the Seahawks:

• S D’Anthony Bell (28)

• CB Derion Kendrick (25)

• CB Josh Jobe (27)

That’s approximately 72% of Seattle’s roster that was still playing in college 2021 or later. In the last couple of decades, “experience” has lost a tremendous amount of value to “youth”, “affordability”, and “athleticism” as teams find ways to generate greater results due to things like:

• Analytics

• Coaching / Schemes

• Experience taking a larger dip globally = it is less valuable locally

To that last point, look at the Eagles:

You’re the Seahawks….You need to beat the Eagles…the Eagles are STARTING 10 players on defense who were drafted since 2022 and NINE players starting who were drafted since 2023! Philadelphia is starting four players who were drafted since last year (DeJean, Quinyon, Hunt, rookie Jihaad Campbell) and 24-year-old Jalen Carter is primed to be in the All-Pro conversation again.

Experience will only take you so far as an offense when the players on the other side of the ball are an average age of about 23, were mostly 4 and 5-star recruits because of athleticism, and trained by Vic Fangio.

And if the Eagles seem too far away because they’re in a different division, then check out the Rams:

With arguably the best defensive line in the NFL, four of those stars were drafted since 2023 (Jared Verse, Kobie Turner, Braden Fiske, and Byron Young) and they just drafted two more (Josaiah Stewart, Ty Hamilton) because good teams think 1-2 years ahead for when they’re going to replace the 24-year-old guys who are starring out today.

That’s what the Eagles do, that’s what the Rams do, and it appears that Seattle could at least be attempting to follow suit.

Why do this?

Aside from the obvious reasons, consider the financial:

The Eagles are compelled to pay Jalen Hurts, A.J. Brown, Lane Johnson, Saquon Barkley, Jordan Mailata, and soon enough will have to do the same for Carter. When you have 5 or 6 guys who want to be paid at the top of the market, it means that the rest of the roster is less likely to last long-term. They have to be replaced by rookie contracts where drafted players could do similar-or-better work as the guys they are replacing.

For example, the Eagles drafted Cooper DeJean and Quinyon Mitchell in 2024, just in time to part with Darius Slay in 2025.

The Seahawks don’t have many top-of-market contracts right now — something they avoided by trading DK Metcalf — but they have over 35 players on the roster drafted since 2022 making their case to change that. Names like Charles Cross, Abe Lucas, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Devon Witherspoon, Tariq Woolen, and who knows maybe even some day Jalen Milroe.

But while some of those players will get a second contract, most of them won’t. That’s roster building philosophy that creates a symptom of being among the youngest teams every season:

The players drafted in 2022 and 2023 have to be wary of the ones drafted in 2025 and 2026. That’s how quickly the league turns over these days. Sometimes you even cut your age in half overnight.

Seaside Joe 2369