Seahawks sign 2, waive 1

Newest corner might be option for kickoffs, the other signee was a bigger recruit than Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Jalen Carter

The Seattle Seahawks waived undrafted free agent cornerback Zy Alexander on Monday, two days before training camp, ending (perhaps temporarily) a relationship with someone who was a relatively popular pick among fans to sneak onto the 53-man roster this year. Seattle could try to bring Alexander back at some point, but an undisclosed injury has put him out of commission for the time being.

Instead, the Seahawks are going to tryout a different undrafted free agent named Alexander and a former 5-star high school recruit:

The Seahawks signed cornerback Kam Alexander and defensive tackle Justin Rogers to fill out the 90-man roster ahead of training camp’s opening day on Wednesday.

For more immediate team updates throughout training camp, subscribe to the newsletter!

It’s been a difficult road to get this far for Kam Alexander. After transferring to Oregon in 2024, Alexander barely saw the field in 2024, recording four tackles and one interception over 12 appearances. He had a strong showing at the Texans local prospect day, as he was not invited to the combine or able to showcase himself at a college pro day:

At 5’10, 183 lbs, this Alexander doesn’t have the same length as the one who just got released, but he had a 4.48 40-yard dash, a remarkable 41.5” vertical, and an 11’1 broad jump, the last two marks of which would have ranked second at the combine.

These numbers are potentially the only reason that Alexander is in any camp with any team in 2025, because even diehard Oregon Ducks fans on the Oregon football subreddit do not know who he is, as is apparent in this reddit post about his declaring for the NFL Draft:

“Who?”

“I had to check. He was a CB, transfered in last January from UTSA. I think we never saw him because a week later Jabbar Muhammad and Brandon Johnson also transferred in.”

This anonymity at Oregon comes in spite of Alexander being a four-star transfer prospect at 247 sports and the 16th-ranked cornerback in the portal in 2024.

At UTSA in 2023, two years after Tariq Woolen left for the NFL, Alexander had a division-leading 15 pass breakupts to go with two interceptions, two tackles for a loss, and a sack. Per his UTSA bio, Alexander had three interceptions in 32 games for Sam Houston State prior to transferring in 2023.

There is also mention — and this is key — of Alexander’s excellent record as a kick returner in high school and college: He averaged 25.6 yards per return in high school and 20.1 yards per return at Sam Houston, although I’m not sure how good the latter is for a college kickoff. But he does have experience and Seattle will be trying more players out in those roles during camp.

Alexander participated in the Seahawks rookie minicamp as a tryout player but wasn’t signed then. He also spent a brief amount of time with the Atlanta Falcons. So Alexander wasn’t drafted and wasn’t signed as an undrafted free agent, meaning that in a way he’s not even one of the top-500 rookies in the league right now.

And yet at the start of training camp he will have the same opportunity to make the team as anybody else on a roster. If he can return kicks, he’ll have a better chance that some.

There is also hope for the other player that Seattle signed on Monday due to being unique on the roster in some regard: Justin Rogers has the size at nose tackle that many fans have been begging for in recent years.

The 6’2, 330 lbs Rogers has 33” arms and spent the first three seasons of his college career at the University of Kentucky, a program that doesn’t quite emphasize just how good of a recruiting get he was coming out of high school:

• Justin Rogers was a 5-star prospect in 2020

• He was the 16th-ranked recruit in the country that year

• He was ranked higher than Bijan Robinson, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Paris Johnson, and Jalen Carter

There is a not-distant universe in which Rogers is a top-3 pick in the NFL Draft, but clearly his career hasn’t gone as planned.

After spurning the likes of Georgia, LSU, and Michigan for Kentucky, Rogers got little action as a true freshman and subsequently never did anything special over his next two seasons with the Wildcats. Rogers entered the portal in 2023 and landed with the Auburn Tigers, but sort of just repeated the ordinary play that was evident at Kentucky in the prior three seasons.

Lance Zierlein called him a “what you see is what you get” nose tackle and gave him a sixth round grade in the 2024 draft. The Cowboys ended up taking Rogers in the seventh, but he failed to make the team and was released before final cuts. The Bengals added him to the practice squad, but he never played in a game with Cincinnati and by the end of the season returned to Dallas.

The Cowboys waived Rogers for a second time last month and he’s been a free agent until now. His weight at the combine was 330, but his listed weight on the Cowboys website is 346, a significant addition that could have contributed to his lack of a job or an appearance in an NFL game.

Monday’s newsletter: Seahawks OL not getting a fair shake in rankings

Mike Macdonald now adds Rogers to a defensive line competition featuring Johnathan Hankins, Quinton Bohanna, Brandon Pili, Bubba Thomas, J.R. Singleton, and Anthony Campbell. There are other defensive tackles of course, but Rogers is not in competition with them.

If Rogers comes out of camp with an offer to be on the Seahawks practice squad, that alone would be a huge accomplishment in of itself.

There have been rumors about a different Cowboys defensive tackle, Mazi Smith, but as of now there is nothing concrete to suggest that Dallas is looking to trade their former first round pick with a connection to Aden Durde. Rogers wouldn’t have any connection to Durde — they weren’t on the Cowboys at the same time — but on the other hand he was readily available.

These moves will be anything but the last that the Seattle Seahawks make to the roster in the next couple of weeks. They do somehow feel slightly significant though, especially with regards to Rogers.