Football starts at the football

Interior offensive linemen and defensive tackles take 'center' stage in free agency, draft: Seaside Joe 1838

As more attention gets diverted to quarterbacks and receivers in the social media age, there’s a certain romanticism that many football fans have for the trenches and the running game. It’s sort of the same feeling that Oppenheimer cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema shouted out for analog media when he won an Oscar on Sunday and said this:

“To all aspiring filmmakers out there, I would like to say please try shooting with that incredible, new, hip thing called ‘celluloid’. It’s much easier they think. And it makes things look so much better.”

To all aspiring GMs out there, I would like to say please first try to win football games where football games begin: At the football. Centers, guards, defensive tackles, and then building out to tackles, edges, running backs, and linebackers. Run the football and…

Some of those GMs would angrily shout back at me for that statement. Not because they refuse to do it, but because they’re already doing it. In free agency, we have seen that guards, defensive tackles, run-stuffing ends, and even some centers have reigned supreme on the 2024 market.

The largest non-Kirk Cousins contract so far has gone to Christian Wilkins, a run-stopping defensive tackle with pass rush ability. The next-biggest went to guard Robert Hunt, $100 million over five years for an interior lineman. The next was Jonathan Greenard, sort of the defensive end version of Wilkins and one of the four free agents who I said would be worth it for Seattle to sign.

The fourth-largest average annual value (AAV) so far goes to Leonard Williams, returning to the Seahawks for $21.5 million per year because of what he does in the trenches. By AAV, Wilkins is second, Hunt is fifth, Greenard is sixth, guard/tackle Mike Onwenu (also listed in my free agent article) is seventh, guard Jonah Jackson signed with the Rams and is ninth (L.A. also re-signed guard Kevin Dotson for $16 million AAV, which is one of the biggest new contracts of the year), linebacker Patrick Queen is 11th, and former Seattle guard Damien Lewis is 12th, getting $13.25 million per season from the Panthers.

Carolina added over $33 million per season to the guard position after watching Bryce Young get even shorter during his rookie campaign. Not tackles, receivers, and tight ends…guards. And it’s not like they couldn’t have done anything because those players are not out there: While nine of PFN’s top-nine free agent running backs were signed in the first two days of free agency, eight of their top-10 receivers are AVAILABLE if we include Tee Higgins, who is on the franchise tag but waiting for a team to make an offer. Former first round picks Calvin Ridley and Marquise Brown are unsigned.

At tackle, Tyron Smith, Jonah Williams, Trent Brown, Mekhi Becton, and Donovan Smith all remain available. Onwenu is the only significant tackle who is signed and that’s because he has the position versatility to be a top-tier guard. The NFL is rewarding guards, centers (Lloyd Cushenberry got $12.5 million per season), and interior defensive linemen (Chris Jones set a record with $31.75 million per season and Justin Madubuike got $24.5 million AAV) this year, with running backs no longer having the pity party that analytics was throwing for them.

If the Seattle Seahawks seem “uninvolved” because they could barely field a starting five right now, don’t expect that to continue for much longer.

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Seahawks do sign a center

The Seahawks signed Nick Harris on Wednesday, a one-year, $2.51 million contract that should not cost them enough to lose a 2025 compensatory pick, which we were keeping track of here. (Although Tuesday’s signing of tight end Pharoah Brown will offset the sixth or seventh round pick Seattle would have gotten for quarterback Drew Lock.)

Harris, a fifth round pick out of Washington in 2020 who has experience with new offensive line coach Scott Huff, has experience playing both center and guard. He has made just four starts in four years but should replace Evan Brown’s role and give Seattle options while assessing their best interior-3 during training camp. It is worth adding that some centers take a long time to get their shot, such as 49ers center Jake Brendel: He didn’t become an NFL starter until he was 30. Harris is only 25.

But I wouldn’t etch Harris into a starting role just yet as the Seahawks have shown some interest in draft prospects who would cost them an early pick.

Seahawks current interior OL

For now, the Seahawks have just three players who play inside after signing Harris, as he joins Olu Oluwatimi and Anthony Bradford. That gives them a combined 15 career starts and 10 of those belong to Bradford. I don’t expect the Seahawks to sign another center because now they have Oluwatimi and Harris and draft options, but we should expect a veteran guard or two to be added into the fold. Players who were released like Laken Tomlinson, Cody Whitehair, and Mark Glowinski wouldn’t cost Seattle a compensatory pick. Neither would retaining Phil Haynes or Evan Brown.

The Seahawks may also just wait it out and see if veterans like Kevin Zeitler, Andrus Peat, or Dalton Risner aren’t still available in the fall, which they might be as teams are now going to be a little more careful with spending. A player like C/G Coleman Shelton might not cost much and has experience with Seattle passing game coordinator Jake Peetz.

I don’t expect the Seahawks to enter camp with 15 combined career starts at center or guard. But last year the Rams did something similar and then found Dotson on the trade market and now they consider him one of their core players.

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Will Seahawks draft a C/G?

The Seahawks had a pre-draft visit with Duke center/guard Graham Barton, a projected top-50 pick. Seattle picks 16th but they don’t have any other top-50 picks. The other two center/guards who you will hear about on day one are Oregon’s Jackson Powers-Johnson and West Virgini’as Zach Frazier, but then some of you will fairly point out that I mocked Mel Kiper for fantasizing (that’s what I call mock drafts: “Fantasizing”) that the Seahawks might select Washington’s Troy Fautanu.

Fautanu is listed as either a tackle or a guard and even Kiper wrote that he would play guard at the next level. Since then, I’ve heard or read quite a few people say that we shouldn’t start moving him inside just yet. ESPN’s Jordan Reid said that Fautanu had “everybody buzzing” at the combine and that he should start his career at tackle because of the athleticism he showed there. Reid felt that Fautanu could be drafted as high as 12th or as low as 24th. Fautanu’s “athleticism score” ranked third overall at the tackle position.

That’s maybe just enough for me to start believing that the Seahawks would draft Fautanu, especially after Wednesday’s news that Scott Huff is already reuniting with linemen he coached at UW. If the Seahawks could draft an offensive lineman with the potential to start at right guard or right tackle—or left guard or left tackle?—then the vision for how Huff and Ryan Grubb plan to win battles in an area that Seattle was consistently losing under Pete Carroll (a vision I wrote about here) will be clear.

Do I think that the Seahawks will draft Powers-Johnson, Fautanu, or Barton in the first round? Nobody can tell you that they know how Seattle will draft differently in the post-Pete era, probably not even John Schneider, so the best we can do is read context clues. That includes when the NFL puts such a high value on guards that the Seahawks are outbid for players like Lewis, who they may not have realized until Monday was a $13 million per year player. (I did write that Lewis could get $13 million per season a few weeks ago.)

I still like the premise to my pitch that the Seahawks are less likely to trade down this year than previous years because 16th overall is right at the border of prospects who will have true first round grades, but if Schneider decides that Seattle’s goal is to get an interior offensive lineman and more draft capital (it is improbable the Seahawks could get a second round pick for trading down in the middle of the first, but round three is an option) then maybe that’s what he will do.

What I DO know is that if football starts at the football, then the Seahawks are one of the worst offenses in the NFL right now. They might actually rank 32nd out of 32 teams if we were going solely off of center and guard because even if you’re super high on Oluwatimi and Bradford, they’re not even true known commodities yet. They’re practically still prospects.

That’s one reason to think that Fautanu and Barton—and Frazier is moving up draft boards if Seattle opts to trade down—are going to be on their radar in April. The Seahawks have also had a visit with Michigan guard Zak Zinter—another Macdonald/Harbaugh connection—a potential third or fourth round selection.

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Seahawks defensive tackle

In addition to re-signing Leonard Williams, the Seahawks gave Myles Adams the exclusive-rights free agent tag and will retain him in 2024 for the cost of $1 million. That gives Seattle a room of those two plus Dre’Mont Jones, Jarran Reed, Mike Morris, Cameron Young, in addition to practice squad candidates Matt Gotel and LaTrell Bumphus. But do not guarantee that the Seahawks will draft a guard or center just yet: The Seahawks reportedly scheduled a visit with Byron Murphy out of Texas, expected by most to be the first defensive tackle drafted this year.

Murphy is 6’, 300 lbs, and ranked top-4 in both production score and athleticism score at his position. The ‘undersized’ defensive tackle comps always range from Aaron Donald to Ed Oliver and most of those prospects end up somewhere in between or closer to Oliver. (Not that Oliver is a bad defensive tackle, he just didn’t prove to be as good as expected although he was better last season.)

I’ve been wanting to get a new Seaside Streams out for some time now and especially whenever I watch a new breakdown from Beau Allen. The former Eagles defensive tackle is making great content over at Chris Long’s channel, including this breakdown of Murphy and teammate T’Vondre Sweat:

If the Seahawks are interested in Murphy, then they’re interested in potentially drafting a defensive tackle with their first round pick and the only player considered close to the range is Murphy. Further down the board you will see Florida State’s Braden Fiske, Illinois’ Johnny Newton, Michigan’s Kris Jenkins (a Macdonald connection), and Sweat.

You’ll often hear that some pre-draft visits are “smoke screens” but I’ve only ever heard former scouts say that their teams would never waste a top-30 visit on a smoke screen. They only get to meet with so many prospects and they don’t want to waste it to throw somebody off of the scent. What is called a “smoke screen” in hindsight is usually just the fact that the vast majority of your visits won’t be drafted by your team because they can only pick so many players and sometimes those visits don’t go as well as hoped.

For example, I think the Seahawks met with Jalen Carter last year to see if they would like him…and they didn’t! At least not as much as they liked Devon Witherspoon.

Though the Seahawks have three veteran defensive line starters and three young players they might really like, we could see Seattle use one or two more picks on players on the line. After all, the Seahawks had arguably the worst run defense in football—even after trading for Williams—and Mike Macdonald can only be expected to do so much. He coached up Madubuike, a third round pick, to being an All-Pro. Could the Seahawks try to repeat history with another third round defensive tackle?

Winning at the ball

As far as winning at the snap, the Seahawks clearly have a lot of repairing to do from the previous regime. Carroll is great at a lot of things but he didn’t care that much about center, guard, and though he always preached winning the run game on both sides of the ball, it stopped happening years ago. The Seahawks drafted running backs but not running lanes. Maybe that will change under Schneider, Macdonald, Grubb, and Huff. If not, I would hate to see the Seah