Top-5 moves of Seahawks offseason

The Seahawks reset much of what they were doing this year, but these 5 moves stand above the rest: Seaside Joe 2010

Sep 01, 2024

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It is fitting to start off Seaside Joe 2010 with a reference to Pete Carroll, as no head coach has been as consistently reliable as he was during his tenure with the Seahawks. Here’s a coach who went 6-10 during his first opportunity with the Jets in 1994 and that ended up being the worst season of his career; it would take the NFL adding a 17th game to the schedule in 2021 for Carroll to post double-digit losses for the second and only other time as a head coach.

Even Bill Belichick posted three double-digit loss seasons prior to winning the Super Bowl in 2001, and he went 4-13 on his way out of New England. Carroll went 9-8 in his last season with Seattle, his 11th winning season in the last 12 years, solidifying himself as the only head coach other than maybe Mike Tomlin who is all but guaranteed to get his team within reach of the playoffs.

The fact that Brian Daboll, Matt Eberflus, Dennis Allen, Todd Bowles, Jonathan Gannon, Robert Saleh, and even former protege Dave Canales are current head coaches, while Carroll and Belichick are free agents who seemingly would have taken a job if offered, is one of the most buried storylines of the offseason. Because what else can we do at this point other than move on? Nobody’s going to hire him tomorrow, but Carroll did finally break a long silence last week to say that he hasn’t completely ruled out a return to coaching at some point.

Any NFL team that feels it is on the brink of winning a Super Bowl and only lacking a leader to put the dominoes in place next year could do itself a huge favor by talking to Carroll.

Re-signing Leonard Williams to three-year, $64.5 million contract

On its own, having Williams on your roster is a GOOD thing, if not a great thing. But paying him (or any player) at the top of the market means that the bar is raised considerably for what Williams needs to do to be a great value for the Seahawks. Just think about how important that value was to the 2013 Seahawks, signing Michael Bennett and Cliff Avril for absurdly cheap deals to bolster the defensive line at a discount.

Just because a big move is here in the “didn’t make the cut” pile, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad move. Signing Williams for what he’s worth is simply not as good as signing a player (like Connor Williams for example) for a lot less than what he might be worth.

Getting Tyler Lockett to take a pay cut

It was inevitable that Seattle would have to do something with Lockett’s contract because he’s something like $8 million less than what he would have cost, which was too much for a 32-year-old receiver. Getting Lockett to stay with the Seahawks for another year without having to part ways is the ideal outcome because he wasn’t going to be on the team at his old salary.

Re-signing Noah Fant

I was surprised that Seattle re-signed Fant, only because I expected Fant to seek a new offense that might utilize him more in the passing game. I guess that with Ryan Grubb on board, Seattle already is that new offense. I think a lot of you might be surprised just how much I do like Noah Fant, but again this is like paying a player for what you expect him to be instead of what he’s been. I really want to see Grubb funnel more of the passing game to Fant, as that would be the only reason to pay Fant like a top-10 to top-15 tight end.

Hiring Aden Durde as DC

Don’t know what this will mean in the future, who really could at this point? And we don’t even know what role Durde will have by the end of the season. Will Mike Macdonald let him call plays at some point in 2024? We kind of wish that doesn’t happen, right? At least not this soon. However, I think by all accounts getting Durde (and Leslie Frazier) on board were great moves by John Schneider. Just not top-5 moves.

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Extending Julian Love, signing Rayshawn Jenkins

I was stunned that there were people covering the Seahawks who didn’t expect Seattle to cut Quandre Diggs and Jamal Adams both. I mean, Diggs was going to make over $10 million in base salary if he had stayed, now he’s making $1 million in base salary with the Titans: That was predictable from January. The Seahawks couldn’t pay Diggs’ 10x was his value was on the market. Seattle’s still paying the price for Diggs and Adams in dead money, but they’ve reduced their cash spending at safety considerably by replacing them with Julian Love (on a new three-year, $33m contract) and Rayshawn Jenkins (two-year, $12 million). Overall, this is good.

Handing the team over to John Schneider

I’ll reserve judgment for this decision—to cut away Pete without replacing John—when at least a couple of years have passed.

Signing Connor Williams

By all accounts, the best possible move the team could have made at center. This is the type of move that would get onto a “top-5 offseason moves” list at the end of the year, if Williams is still healthy.

Trading for Sam Howell

I said after—and before—the trade that Sam Howell was the ideal quarterback to target as a backup/developmental project to pair with Geno Smith. An absolute steal of a bargain and a better quarterback than everyone drafted ahead of him in 2022, including Kenny Pickett and Desmond Ridder. And also if his career goes like Drew Lock’s, we won’t even see him play very much for the Seahawks in the next two years, so can it be a “top-5” move without knowing how much he’ll contribute yet?

I could go over six, or seven, or 18 other moves that didn’t make the top-5. I have to cut off somewhere, so if you didn’t see a move that we should have seen, put it in the comments:

Seaside Joe