16 minutes of Seahawks OL looking lost against Packers

The Seahawks have to replace Laken Tomlinson

These are 3 things the Seahawks must change on offense this offseason no matter what happens in the next three weeks:

• Upgrade guard through free agency

• Replace Tyler Lockett

• Draft at least 1 OL in first 2 rounds

Fans can debate the other issues until they’re blue in the face (Grubb, Geno, DK), but these three things should be universally agreeable, including Lockett. Even at a lower price point, the team shouldn’t be handing 70% of the snaps to a receiver averaging 10-15 yards per game.

But Lockett’s deficiencies are offscreen and therefore not as VISIBLE as Laken Tomlinson’s, who even at $1.2 million is overpaid.

In this film breakdown of Packers linebacker Edgerrin Cooper, you will often see Tomlinson blocking nobody and watching Geno Smith get sacked or watching the running back tackled for a loss. Tomlinson is as bad as any veteran fill-in guard that John Schneider has ever signed, so maybe this will finally compel Seattle to spend money in free agency to make it stop.

But if you think that you might be encouraged to see Christian Haynes at left guard after the Seahawks raised the white flag, you’d be wrong. Haynes did just as much watching as Tomlinson, as did Michael Jerrell at left tackle and sometimes Jalen Sundell at center or Sataoa Laumea at right guard.

The scary thing isn’t that this is Seattle’s B or C-squad offensive line. The frightening part is that these players are meant to fortify the future of the Seahawks offensive line and yet we are still waiting for ONE interior player to truly establish himself as a mainstay.

Every young player deserves slack and time to develop — every single one of these linemen is better than their worst plays, which are the only plays we ever talk about — but unfortunately for them, Schneider can no longer be “the Laken Tomlinson of GMs” when it comes to guards and centers…

Which is to say, he can no longer whiff on offensive linemen and then stand there watching, doing nothing about it as the quarterback is sacked again.

Tomlinson can’t be on the Seahawks next season.

If the Chiefs somehow let Trey Smith become a free agent, I do not expect Schneider to make him the best offer on the market. But maybe he should.

If he does something like that at guard, then extends Charles Cross, drafts an offensive lineman in the first two rounds, and Abe Lucas has a healthy 2025, Seattle’s offensive line might finally escape the clutches of “watch how bad this is” film footage.

No. More. Watching.

Paul G: The highest offseason priorities are to extend Charles Cross and to sign Ernest Jones. Metcalf and Smith are both secondary to that.

Re: DK, there’s no point in trading him for less than a second round pick. Otherwise, Seattle is better off with another year of him plus a compensatory pick if DK can actually command a 30M/yr contract on the open market.

Extending Charles Cross seems clear because of the value of the position he plays, the dearth of quality left tackles, and the probability that at 24 he’s going to get better. It took Trent Williams 12 years to make first-team All-Pro and he’s considered a Hall of Fame lock. Plus, it justifies (in the public’s eye) John Schneider’s decision to draft Cross.

I’ve seen speculation that Ernest Jones could be an $18 million+ linebacker, which would put him in the top-3 at the position. I would be surprised if that’s what Seattle pays for Jones because that number overrates the value of a run stopping linebacker who:

• Doesn’t have a sack (Which implies he’s not going to do that in Seattle)

• Isn’t considered to be great in coverage (Going back to his Rams days)

• Was traded away by 2 teams in 2 months (I think I know why the Rams didn’t keep him, but why did the Titans part ways?)

This is not to say that the Seahawks should not keep Jones, because they absolutely should.

It’s only about the price tag because Seattle didn’t sign Patrick Queen ($13.6m salary) when he would presumably have been favored by his former Ravens DC Mike Macdonald, so do the Seahawks see Jones as being $5 million+ better than Queen?

Then just give him the franchise tag, right? Impossible for this reason:

The NFL lumps together inside linebackers with outside linebackers, so the franchise tag for a linebacker is projected to be $25 million in 2025. The Seahawks can’t tag Jones (which could be partly related to why he was traded twice) but there should also be some hesitation with just rolling over for $20 million per season just because his predecessors were terrible.

Today was the day I realized that it could be difficult to retain Ernest Jones without letting him test the free agent waters first. Though this is how Seattle ended up replacing Jordyn Brooks with two players who are worse, they either need to get Jones to agree to take $13 million per season without testing free agency or they need to let him hear other offers and ask his agent for the opportunity to match the best one.

As to DK’s trade value, a second round pick is a reasonable ask. I don’t think there’s any chance of getting a comp pick for DK in 2027 (he’ll be a 2026 free agent, so the pick wouldn’t make it to Seattle until two years after the 2025 draft, if he’s traded next year instead) because I don’t think there’s any chance of him playing out his contract.

Paul Johnson: Right now DK may be valuable as a decoy. His double coverage makes things easier for Jaxon Smith-Njigba. This is Lockett’s last season. Remove DK and Lockett and life is going to be tougher for the new guys

With regards to how much DK helps JSN, in two games without DK Metcalf, Jaxon Smith-Njigba had 13 catches for 249 yards and 2 touchdowns, with multiple long plays called back because of someone else’s penalty.

As far as being a decoy, just as tight ends aren’t paid at the top of the market to block, receivers aren’t paid at the top of the market “to be decoys”, which is a term that I can’t recall ever being used in Seattle before to justify keeping receivers who don’t catch passes and score touchdowns.

Ryan Grubb did acknowledge DK’s target share on Thursday, saying that he was “bothered” that the Seahawks couldn’t force more passes to DK:

Also, the Seahawks passing offense is not good. If the argument was, “I know DK doesn’t have great numbers, but he’s a big reason why Seattle is 3rd in scoring” then that would be a different argument. The Seahawks have an unexciting offense that opposing teams don’t seem to fear, which seems to contradict the notion that Metcalf is an intimidating presence who demands the most attention. My two cents is that Smith-Njigba is harder to cover and gameplan against than DK.

We can only go off of the numbers and until wide receivers are credited with assists, the numbers haven’t been there to justify the contract I’m just assuming he expects. Maybe I’ll later regret assuming that, but probably not as much as how often most teams regret paying top of the market.

defjames: In the early PC tenure, they were pretty ruthless about churning the roster to find the right guys. We have seen some of that on D side this year. There should be no sacred cows…For me, this is the single biggest reason that we are an average team. At some point you have to stop throwing good money after bad, and avoid dead cap spending.

Yes.

Ronald B.: Shouldn’t Macdonald and the coaches have seen that the third string right guard was better than the first two at the beginning of the year?

I read a book once, just once, and it was about playing offensive line in the NFL. The writer said that when you’re second string, it can be nearly impossible to get reps in practice that prove to coaches you’re better than the guy ahead of you because the coaches are doing everything in their power to make “the starters” better so the backups just don’t matter as much.

It seems that even an “open competition” at guard didn’t matter because Laumeau was buried underneath too many layers of that competition:

Laumea wasn’t going to be given valuable reps until Haynes, Anthony Bradford, and at least one or two other players (McClendon Curtis, Raeqwon O’Neal) failed. This is hardly exclusive to Seattle—the Rams had to learn the hard way that sixth round rookie Beaux Limmer was far better than $17 million free agent Jonah Jackson—and I think that if there’s a silver lining at least the Seahawks have a better idea to the pecking order going into 2025 training camp.

But if they’re able to sign a starting guard who is closer to being a guarantee — Ben Bredeson is the name I suggested a month ago — that would seem to be Schneider’s smartest play.

Seaside Joe 2120