Are the Seahawks going to be great?

Did Seahawks fix their issues at guard this time?

On Sunday, I opened up the floor at Seaside Joe to the community, asking for “Seahawks Truths”, either anonymous or under your LEGAL screennames, essentially centering around takes on the team following the draft. You can still add your own by clicking here!

Here are a few to get started and my reactions to them:

Anonymous: Anthony Bradford will be the Seahawks best interior lineman this season

I love a good out-of-the-ordinary take like this one, and as I see it Anthony Bradford is no worse than “at a crossroads”, contrary to the more popular belief that he’s at a dead end. I’m going to write a lot about Will Fries today and before we get to that, keep these numbers in mind:

• Fries, 7th round pick, 9 starts going into third year (when he was 25)

• Bradford, 4th round pick, 21 starts going into third year (he just turned 24)

Look at the John Benton track record for salvaging the careers of offensive linemen, many of whom had worse resumes than Bradford.

It’s going to be a wide open competition at right guard between Bradford, Christian Haynes, and at least 3-4 other options on the depth chart, but 21 starts at age 24 is an advantage that only comes with experience. That crossroads leads to somewhere or nowhere, but the last thing Seattle can continue to do is give up on their own OL picks and watch them become starters for other teams.

Anonymous: Too many tickets available to the public. Offer at least 10,000 to those on the wait list.

I haven’t bought tickets to a Seahawks game in a long time, so anything related to this feels as foreign to me as dining out on Mars. Does this Seahawks Truth spark any ideas to any of you as far as being on the wait list, buying tickets, or how to improve Seattle’s system for buying tickets?

Danno: I know we have a new QB who’s only had one good season. I know we’re on our 3rd offensive coordinator in 3 years. I know we didn’t come out of free agency having addressed our biggest need - O-line. I know we lost 2 of our top receivers. I know we lack depth at CB, ILB, NT, and questions remain at C and RG. Maybe RT if Lucas truly has a chronic knee condition. But I’m feeling bullish about this season. The truth is I like how things transpired. I felt relieved we didn’t chase Will Fries in free agency and try to match the Vikings offer. Although JS did not make the picks I pegged for the Hawks in the draft, I trust and like the picks we came away with.

The last thing I want to see is a schedule release that gives us 3 easier games to begin the year. I think the longer the offense has to absorb the new system and begin to hum, the better our record will be.

This is the truth, and you heard it here first. Feel free to disagree. But we’re looking at a 12-5 team this year.

SUSPICIOUS FRIES

We tend to judge general managers on the moves they make, but the Seahawks have been the model franchise in terms of having success because of the moves they don’t make. The ultimate example of this happened in 2022:

• Don’t pay Russell Wilson a third time

• (Trade him for two firsts, two seconds, and three players instead)

• Don’t replace him with Deshaun Watson

• Don’t spend the most (or hardly any) money in free agency

• Don’t get desperate and trade up in the draft for equal talents

Not making a move is a gamble, yes, but it’s the path that leads to more “Plan Bs” and “Plan Cs” if “Plan A” is a bust because the team didn’t put all their eggs in one guard.

The Vikings signed free agent guard Will Fries to a 5-year, $87.5 million contract with $44 million guaranteed even though he’s a former seventh round pick who missed 12 games in 2024 and has only been a full-time NFL starter for one season. There was a push by some fans — and some writers like Gregg “Methinks” Bell — for the Seahawks to give Fries whatever he wanted in order to come to Seattle. Conversely, I had my doubts that the Seahawks should or would sign Fries.

Maybe in three years Fries will be considered the best guard in the NFL and “the one that got away” for the Colts…and that’s the ONLY outcome that will justify Minnesota’s decision to pay him $17.5 million per year.

The Seahawks could have beaten that offer — they have far more cap space than the Vikings — and they chose to pay oft-injured, over-30 veterans at wide receiver and defensive end instead. However, Cooper Kupp and DeMarcus Lawrence could be released in a year if they disappoint and Seattle would SAVE $16.5 million in cap space. Compare that to Fries:

• $17 million cap hit in 2026 (locked in)

• $21.5m cap hit in 2027 ($12m dead money, $9.5m saved if released)

• $21.5m cap hit in 2028

• $21.5m cap hit in 2029

The Vikings are entering cap hell in 2026, so there’s a good chance that they would even restructure Fries’ contract and make him un-releasable in 2027.

Which is totally fine IF Fries is healthy and continues to be the top-10 guard that he was for a short time in Indianapolis. But Minnesota is banking on Fries to only be his good plays — which are the highlights you’d see when folks are arguing to invest $44 million into a guard — and rarely his bad ones. Like this two-point conversion attempt that would have tied the game against the Texans, but Fries (#75 RG you see running into the end zone on this play) doesn’t block anyone and his assignment makes the tackle to stop the Colts:

By all means, Will Fries is allowed to become an All-Pro guard for the Colts who the Seahawks didn’t sign. There would be nothing wrong with that.

But given his actual resume at this time, the contract it would have taken to sign him would have been an overpay and a move made out of desperation. We could, and I have, argued that drafting Grey Zabel in the first round is also an act of desperation…but the difference is that Zabel costs far less money, is younger/easier for coaches to mold, and Seattle has more options to replace him if the move turns out to be a bust, which nobody really expects it to be.

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Ted Sheffield: I love the Hawks but the truth is that we’ve been caught in the middle for some time now and have no clear path to escaping. We’re basically churning through players and “eras.” The Sam Darnold/JSN era will be much like the Geno Smith/DK era. Good but far from great.

We need to find a way to assemble a large enough collection of elite talent to actually contend. Great teams have 5+ elite players on their roster. We have maybe one or two depending on how you think about spoon and JSN.

I’m excited the draft maybe moved us in the right direction, but really that depends on whether we hit with Milroe. Otherwise we’re just treading water with Darnold.

Defense is really not going to be notably better/different from last year, so why do we really think this team is better in 2025/2026?

Seahawks’ Elite-test

Ted is 100% correct that great teams have a half-dozen “elite” players and that the Seahawks are still in the process of proving that they have even a half of a half-dozen of those. Before we get to Seattle, let’s debate how many “elite” players were on the Eagles last season:

• Few arguments against them being elite: RB Saquon Barkley, WR A.J. Brown, RT Lane Johnson, DT Jalen Carter

• They made the Pro Bowl at least: LG Landon Dickerson, C Cam Jurgens, LB Zack Baun (All-Pro)

• Fans tend to really like them: QB Jalen Hurts, WR DeVonta Smith, LT Jordan Mailata, TE Dallas Goedert, CB Quinyon Mitchell

Many people would argue that the only major talent difference between the Seahawks and a roster like Philadelphia’s are the players in the trenches. Is Hurts better than Sam Darnold? I don’t think so. Is Mitchell more valuable than Devon Witherspoon? Probably not. Is Jaxon Smith-Njigba better than Smith? I would say YES.

But if you pit these teams against each other last season, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine why Seattle could lose because they couldn’t: pressure the QB OR stop the running back OR protect their QB OR run against the Eagles.

Ted’s Seahawks truth has been the same as my own:

The Seahawks of the last 10 seasons haven’t won the talent wars, especially in the trenches.

Where Ted and I might split apart is the outlook on the 2025 and 2026 Seahawks. But where Ted has the edge is that the burden of proof is on Seattle’s draft picks/signings to prove skeptics wrong, which is much harder to do than to become one of the best players in the entire league.

Still, I remain hopeful for these reasons:

• I’ll take a first shot with Darnold over a fourth try with Geno (100 times out of 100)

• Mike Macdonald is a second-year HC, but he’s also a fourth-year defensive coordinator in his second year with these players: Coordinators tend to have one install season that is full of mistakes prior to the scheme/methods finally making sense in year two (think Mike McDaniel’s second year as Dolphins HC/OC)

• If Leonard Williams played for the Steelers, I bet the perception of him would be as an “elite” player like it is for Cam Heyward; Williams was one of the best defensive players in the league last season

• JSN and Cooper Kupp are both more predictable weapons than DK Metcalf, which allows Klint Kubiak to call a drive without surprises; not enough was made about DK’s 61% catch rate, two fumbles, and six drive-killing penalties in 2024

• Will Seattle get second-year jumps from Byron Murphy, Tyrice Knight, A.J. Barner, and Christian Haynes?

• Will Seattle get third-year jumps from JSN, Witherspoon, Derick Hall, and Zach Charbonnet?

• How much more comfortable is Ernest Jones when he’s with a team for a full offseason instead of being traded twice?

• How much better of an OL coach is veteran John Benton compared to a rather risky shot in the dark with Scott Huff?

That’s without speculating whether or not certain players will be healthy (Abe Lucas, Uchenna Nwosu) because that feels like a stretch to me. Some players are healthy, some aren’t, that’s life in the NFL and we can’t predict it. But it doesn’t feel like a stretch to say that players tend to get better when they have 1-2 years of experience under their belts, and coaches tend to coach better when they have had a year or more to install their system.

Building through the draft and gaining experience:

You could not do much worse as a guard than Laken Tomlinson’s 2024, so even a below-average rookie first round season by Zabel would be an upgrade there. The trenches seem to be less of an issue going into 2025, the slate of opponents seems to be slightly more ideal than the Rams’ schedule, and I think the Seahawks are entering more “on the upslope” seasons in 2025 than they were in 2022, 2023, or 2024.

If elite means top-5 at your position, then I could see arguments for Leonard Williams, Witherspoon (as a nickel), JSN (as a slot), and even Julian Love already. Whereas several more interesting names — Charles Cross, Lucas, Kenneth Walker, Murphy, Tariq Woolen — are quietly hovering around “maybe” going into the season.

It’s a big “MAYBE” — being championship caliber is special for a reason — and I agree with you, Ted, that Seattle has to prove it before we stamp it in as reality. I do feel that 2025 is a far more exciting time than 2023 and 2024, so “maybe” that’s why I am expecting a better outcome this time.

Seaside Joe 2261