Seahawks free agents: Defense

Predicting outcome for Jordyn Brooks, Bobby Wagner, Leonard Williams, and every other DEFENSIVE free agent: Seaside Joe 1818

Since I started covering the Seattle Seahawks on a daily basis in 2011, I always had some semblence of a track record to go off of in regards to the type of players who the team wanted to keep or add. Now the only real precedent we have for how the Seahawks might proceed in the Mike Macdonald era is that the last time Seattle went through a coaching change, they cleaned house.

For that reason, my thought process for who the Seahawks will keep only comes down to two tiers:

“I’m Devon Witherspoon” and “I’m not Devon Witherspoon”

If you’re not in the former category, then I have no idea how important you actually are to the future of the Seattle Seahawks. That’s not an insult to anyone who isn’t Witherspoon—the player who I think Macdonald would build Seattle’s defensive identity and scheme around—it’s just a fact that the Seahawks are starting over and the only player on the entire roster who seems to check enough boxes to transcend even the most aggressive philosophy change would be the team’s superstar cornerback.

Now, will the Seahawks look mostly the same in 2024? Yes because Macdonald and John Schneider don’t have the resources to overhaul a roster in one offseason. The 2010 Seahawks looked mostly the same as the 2009 Seahawks, but by the time Seattle was in the Super Bowl the only key players left from the Jim Mora season were Red Bryant, Brandon Mebane, and Jon Ryan.

That took three offseasons.

I don’t think that it will take as long for the Seahawks to build the team in Macdonald and Schneider’s vision for two key reasons: a) Schneider had a hand in adding every single player in the roster, so he’s more likely to want to keep them than when he inherited players at the start of his GM career, b) the Seahawks are coming off of two fruitful draft classes.

I think that players such as Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Boye Mafe, Kenneth Walker, and quite a few others have a really good chance of fitting into the visions of Macdonald’s defense and Ryan Grubb’s offense.

I’m not knocking anyone, I’m only accepting that the team is in the middle of a stage of uncertainty and here’s what needs to happen in the next few weeks and has already been happening day and night:

Mike Macdonald and his coaches spend hours upon hours studying the film of everybody on the Seattle Seahawks. Maybe not as much time watching football as an intern at PFF, but quite a lot of it I’m sure! The first priority for those coaches has to be forming opinions on Seattle’s 2024 free agents and then having talks with Schneider to decide together, “Does this guy fit what we want to do?”

In the NFL, a player can be great and still not fit what you do. Every decision prior to now was made based mostly in what Pete Carroll wanted to do and now those opinions have to change because every single coach on the staff is new except for Karl Scott. So I expect a lot of change and that means that all of Seattle’s free agents are basically the same as external free agents:

It’s no longer a matter of who the Seahawks want to keep. It’s now a matter of who Macdonald wants to add, including the free agents who were already here.

These are my thoughts on Seattle’s 2024 defensive free agents and my guess on how the Seahawks could proceed even though I can’t say anyone really knows for sure how well they fit into a Mike Macdonald-led team.

LB Jordyn Brooks

Seahawks fans have a personal connection to Brooks because he was a first round pick of the team, but I would always encourage people to try and step outside of yourself as a fan and ask if you OBJECTIVELY want this player. Do you think that Ravens fans are hopeful that their team replaces Patrick Queen with Brooks? No, they want to keep Queen.

Do Seahawks fans want Queen to replace Brooks? No, I think the vast majority would believe that Brooks is better. Most outside Seattle disagree.