Seahawks OL treated unfairly and I can prove it

Why is Seahawks OL treated so much worse than the Cardinals, a team that looks to have far bigger issues with their starting 5?

Most people rank NFL offensive lines based on things they think, not things they know. There is a simple explanation for why this happens: Most of us know almost nothing about the offensive line.

Case in point, I want to compare for you the “30th-ranked” Seahawks offensive line with an offensive line from the middle that I chose at random off of this list from FantasyPros.com: I’m going with the “16th-ranked” Cardinals.

By the way, if you like Seahawks offensive line talk, please subscribe to Seaside Joe’s Regular Joes club for only $5 per month — camp starts in three days so NOW IS THE TIME! — and I can promise more of it, let’s just get a couple of new signups today:

Let’s try to find out what makes the Cardinals an average offensive line compared to the “putridity-ness” (my word) of Seattle’s near-last place offensive line:

Cardinals Tackles - Paris Johnson and Jonah Williams

If we’re basing this off of draft pedigree, then Johnson and Charles Cross are both top-10 picks. From Johnson’s first two seasons in the NFL, I couldn’t find a shred of evidence that he’s better than Cross. In fact, for those who lean on PFF (another example of how little we know about OL: so many people trust this one website to tell them what to think), Cross’s 82.5 grade was higher than Johnson’s 80.8.

Cross was given top-15 grades in both pass protection and run blocking, whereas Johnson was not ranked in the top-20 in either category and was 27th in pass protection.

Furthermore, Paris Johnson suffered a knee injury at the end of the 2024 season that cost him the final three games of the year. Cross played all 17 games without an issue. They’re both 24 but Cross has an extra year of experience.

Right off the bat of this comparison experiment, we see that the 30th-ranked OL’s left tackle could easily be better than the team at 16th. Given the widely known importance of left tackle, that’s a huge red flag.

On the right side, Jonah Williams is a former 11th overall pick but his draft status is mostly remembered for what he didn’t become, not what he became. If Williams was as good as he was supposed to be, he would be the Bengals left tackle today, not Arizona’s right tackle.

On top of that, Williams missed 11 games last season with knee injuries (2) and the team has kept the nature and severity of that ailment under wraps. So it’s not as though we have a clear explanation on hand that “Abe Lucas is a health concern, whereas Williams is fine.”.

Both OL’s right tackles have knees that make their fans worried. The bigger difference between the two expected right tackle starters is that we’ve seen Lucas praised as being one of the best in the game before and we haven’t seen that from Jonah Williams despite his pre-draft reputation. If Williams doesn’t win the job or just can’t go, veteran Kelvin Beachum and 2024 fifth rounder Christian Jones are in the mix to be Arizona’s right tackle instead.

Neither would make me think that the Cardinals have a superior right tackle to Abraham Lucas.

Cross and Lucas set for 2025 system upgrade

Something to watch for both of these offensive tackles, one of Seattle’s best all-time tackle duos back in 2022 even though they were only rookies at the time, is the potential for their games to go to another level with Klint Kubiak as the offensive coordinator.

A healthy Abe Lucas is one of the best athletes in the NFL at the tackle position:

Kubiak’s outside zone scheme will rely on offensive linemen who are athletic and light on their feet, less so on the “maulers”, which is why players like Lucas could fit so well into what’s about to happen on the Seahawks offense. Drafting a player like Grey Zabel in the first round is the perfect example of the type of movement skills that Kubiak is looking for out of five starters this season.

Similarly, although nobody said Cross crushed the combine in 2022, some of his scores were even better than Lucas and his top-10 athletic traits were evident on film:

I do not know how Johnson and Williams are expected to fit into the Cardinals scheme, obviously because it is Johnson’s third and Williams’ second year with OC Drew Petzing there’s continuity there. But because Seattle is shifting into a gear that could suit Cross and Lucas better than the last two OCs, the Seahawks may end up getting the superior performance in 2025 given that we know that they might already have the superior tackles.

Cardinals Guards - Evan Brown and Isaiah Adams

You read that right: Arizona’s “far better offensive line” features a left guard who started 16 games for the Seahawks two years ago and then Seattle said “nah, we’re good.”

It’s not that the Seahawks have always been right in their evaluations (Ethan Pocic, Mark Glowinski, and so on) but could this have really happened? Brown won the starting center job by default in 2023 and despite Seattle’s desperation for interior upgrades, not a single person on the Seahawks recognized that he should be kept for practically no money?

Brown’s 17-start season for the Cardinals at left guard was called a “pleasant surprise” and “the most consistent” on the team’s offensive line, but those are both relatively low bars to cross.

Is there someone out there — perhaps an alien or a time traveler? — who would prefer Evan Brown to Grey Zabel? Either in the future or right now?

It doesn’t matter if Zabel has zero career NFL games, the answer is that nobody would rather have Brown over Zabel. Even if Zabel turns out to be a gargantuan bust in the future, that has no bearing on pre-2025 offensive line rankings that should be favoring the 18th overall pick in the draft over a journeyman backup who has played for six teams in six years.

Even coming from Seaside Joe, a writer who was not totally in favor of using a top-20 pick on an interior lineman, there’s no denying that Zabel’s athleticism, movement skills, versatility, and how those traits translated against better competition at the Senior Bowl should make him a MEDIA FAVORITE going into the 2025 season. So how did we get here:

• Zabel should be higher-ranked than Brown

• Cross has an outstanding case to be ranked higher than Johnson, but is at worse his equal

• Lucas and Williams have the same negative (knee injuries) but Lucas has played better when either of them are healthy

So far I’ve covered and competed 3 out of 5 starting offensive line positions — left tackle, right tackle, and left guard could also be the three “most important” — and the Seahawks have a clear advantage over the Cardinals; yet it is Seattle at 30 and Arizona at 16.

This must mean that the Seahawks are overwhelmingly dominated at center and right guard — the two positions we know that Seattle hasn’t settled yet — but two Cardinals superbeasts at those spots, right?

At least one answer is a big fat “no way” and the other is a toss-up.

The Cardinals also have a right guard competition

Arizona drafted guard Isaiah Adams 71st overall in last year’s draft, 10 picks ahead of Christian Haynes going to Seattle at 81.

• Haynes played 167 snaps

• Adams played 462 snaps

The major difference between the two is that Adams started the Cardinals final five games of the season, only getting the opportunity because starter Trystan Colon was so bad. Coincidentally, Adams’ first start came against the Seahawks in Week 14, a performance cited as arguably the worst on the entire team with a fan calling him “the bane of my existence”.

Another fan said: “Adams has had a rough season. That pick isn't looking good. What's up with Colon?”

Does that sound any different than comments about Haynes or Anthony Bradford from Seahawks fans?

Even if Adams showed improvement during his last four starts, is that a large enough sample size to feel confident that he’s better than Haynes or Bradford, and no longer the “bane” of Arizona’s offensive line?

Going into camp, there isn’t a known player competiting against Adams for the job and that’s only because nobody else on the roster seems qualified. However, Cardinals sports radio is hesitant to call him a starter and many in Arizona are wondering when and if the team will bring back free agent Will Hernandez.

Journeyman Royce Newman (3 snaps last year, only eight starts since 2022), sixth round rookie Hayden Conner, and former Seahawks wash-out Jake Curhan are also on the depth chart.

Say what you must about Haynes’ rookie season, a disappointing 0-start campaign that couldn’t beat out the highs and lows of Bradford or Sataoa Laumea, but we’re only a year past his draft pedigree as “the best right guard in the 2024 class”. Most analysts projected him at least a full round ahead of Adams on their lists, and although it clearly didn’t play out that way, what makes pick 71 better than pick 81 given that neither hit their rookie seasons with a full head of steam?

I would say that Haynes and Adams are both bound to be victims or successes of circumstance. Who has the better coaching staff (Seattle’s is entirely new on that side, with at least four who have extensive OL experience) and supporting cast?

Furthermore, I’m not convinced that Anthony Bradford, as bad as he was last year (shout out to Alexandre Castro for a better breakdown than I could do), is necessarily worse than the depth that Arizona has at right guard.

Bradford’s 1,239 career snaps, and sadly I can’t say that he’s ever had a good offensive line coach in the NFL, is at least something that the Seahawks can use as evidence for what he needs to improve on as a guard.

A guard who is actually younger than Christian Haynes by a full year, as well as being younger than Cross, Oluwatimi, and Lucas.

A motivated Anthony Bradford with an experienced OL coach in John Benton could potentially be Seattle’s best opportunity to get a right guard as good (or better) than Damien Lewis.

Now consider THIS:

• The Seahawks have options between Haynes, Bradford, Laumea, Jalen Sundell, Josh Jones, Bryce Cabeldue, and Mason Richman; if option one fails, try option two; if option two fails, try option three; so on

• The Cardinals have banked on Isaiah Adams and if he fails, their choices are a free agent with a history of ACL tears, a sixth round rookie (essentially their “Cabeldue” might be option 2), a veteran backup who missed all of last season, and JAKE CURHAN.

Is anyone who felt skeptical about the Seahawks offensive being “as good or better” than the Cardinals at the start of this test still skeptical now after we’ve covered LT, LG, RG, RT?

Unless the comparison at center is Jason Kelce vs. a still-retired Connor Williams, how the hell did the Cardinals end up 16th vs. 30th?

Cardinals Center - Hjalte Froholdt

By far the easiest case for an Arizona offensive lineman to be ranked ahead of a Seattle player at the same position (Yahoo has Froholdt first and Oluwatimi fourth in the division), Froholdt is still no more than an above-average center who probably gets a little more credit than he’s due based on the fact that nobody expected him to be good and he’s doing it on the Cardinals.

And by the way, he’s 29. Froholdt only seems like a 22-year-old with a bright future because he didn’t become an NFL starter until he was 27. A former fourth round pick by the Patriots in 2020, Froholdt was waived by New England during his rookie season, spent time on the Texans but never played for them, and was on-again, off-again with the Browns for two years.

He fell backwards into Arizona’s starting center job in 2023 and PFF ranked him 10th at the position last month, a designation that so few Cardinals players have experienced before; you can’t blame fans for being over-the-moon when any Cardinals player gets a “top-10” grade, even if it’s 10th.

Since landing in Arizona in 2023, Froholdt has continued to elevate his game each season. His 76.1 PFF overall grade ranked in the top five among qualifying centers this past season, powered largely by his ability as a run blocker. Froholdt is a mauler in gap concepts, where his 82.9 PFF run-blocking grade in 2024 ranked fourth at the position.

The Seahawks biggest problem at center is twofold:

• We don’t know who their starting center will be

• The two most-likely options have not shown much in the NFL

PFF ranked Oluwatimi 31st on the same list:

Connor Williams‘ surprise retirement thrust Oluwatimi into the starting job for the final eight games of the 2024 season, and he struggled a bit to gain his footing. Although pass protection was a challenge, the second-year center enjoyed some success as a run blocker, posting a 65.8 PFF run-blocking grade.

Haynes has also seen some work at center this offseason, giving him some potential to be the next Justin Britt, an offensive lineman who did salvage his career by moving to the middle. Sundell’s superior athleticism (and perhaps to a small degree his prior experience with college teammate Zabel) could ultimately give him the edge over Oluwatimi.

I wouldn’t blame anybody for arguing that not only do the Cardinals have a better center, but that there is no scheme that could make players like Sundell and Oluwatimi significantly better than the established Froholdt.

However, we are talking about a center and it is only one player out of five. Some argue that center is the most important offensive lineman because he 1) has the most mental responsibility and 2) these days many defenses will feature their best defensive lineman at nose tackle or 3-tech.

But are seeing consistency with how Seattle’s problem at center is compared to teams ranked much higher than them?

For example:

• PFF’s 32nd ranked center, the only one “worse” than Oluwatimi, is Lions center Tate Ratledge; Detroit’s Pro Bowl center Frank Ragnow retired after the team would have had a chance to adequately replace him

• The Lions remain 5th on FantasyPros list

• The Lions are 13th on PFF’s list, which to be fair is much lower than I expected

• The Lions are still 6th on Brandon Thorn’s list

With huge apparent weaknesses at center (and left guard Christian Mahogany), plus the departure of offensive coordinator Ben Johnson, the Lions have managed to retain respect because of past success and an expectation that Taylor Decker (who is injured right now) and Penei Sewell are just that good.

Maybe they are…or maybe most people who rank offensive lines fail to assess the respective qualities of CURRENT UNITS because most people are not willing to take a risk on grading the likelihood of an OL’s future value based on things like coaching changes, injuries, the inadequacy of PFF grades, age, development, scheme, athleticism-fit-to-role, and the illusion of quality that is based on Pro Bowl nominations. So instead they go to:

Narratives.

Well, I can understand the narrative that the Seattle Seahawks have a bad offensive line. The team’s struggles in that area of football are as well established as a negative as their home field’s reputation for being the hardest away stadium in the NFL is established as a positive…which is also a narrative that we’ve recently learned needs to be upgraded until it is proven again.

What I can’t understand is how there is such a consistency with the Seahawks being a bottom-3 offensive line — while rarely mentioning the coaching/scheme changes, the potential for a healthy Lucas, and the monumental differences between Laken Tomlinson and Zabel — while so many teams ranked above them, even 10-20 spots higher, seem to be in the same boat or sinking.

In the words of a picky ornithologist: “I’ll give you the Eagles, but I will NOT give you the Cardinals”. Now we know that many of these offensive line rankings just won’t fly.

Seaside Joe 2331