Why trade Metcalf? Hawks can easily extend him again

May 1, 2024 cc Leave a comment

DK Metcalf trade rumors and reports just won’t die.

A segment of fans keeps insisting the Seahawks should trade their star receiver, and some even think the Hawks were trying to use him to trade up in last weekend’s draft – probably based on speculation from anonymous league sources to The Washington Post.

But there was no legitimate report indicating that Seattle was shopping Metcalf. In fact, the report that the Hawks allegedly tried to get into the top 10 for Michael Penix Jr. was debunked by both Curtis Crabtree and Brady Henderson.

Now there is scuttlebutt that Pittsburgh has called Seattle about a possible deal to reunite Metcalf with Russell Wilson. No surprise, considering the Steelers reportedly were trying to get Brandon Aiyuk from the 49ers.

As fun as a Wilson-Metcalf reunion would be for the rest of the league to see, the Hawks actually have never shown an inclination to trade their star receiver — and they certainly seem better off with him than trading him for some extra cap space and a first-round pick.

They certainly will be able to afford to keep him.

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NFL draft, The roster

Yes, the Hawks look more like a playoff team now

April 29, 2024 cc Leave a comment

A Seattle Times headline asked: With roster shuffling mostly done, are Seahawks closer to being a playoff team?

The answer to that question is “yes” – because John Schneider found an innovative new coach, improved the defensive line and secondary and seems to have made the offensive line and linebacker spots better, too.

Schneider hit what we consider to be home runs with the hiring of Mike Macdonald as coach, the re-signing of Leonard Williams and the drafting of Byron Murphy II in the first round. Macdonald wanted to “build a wall” — and those two guys should help do it.

In the draft, the Hawks also focused on adding blockers – three linemen and a tight end. And they added a much-needed linebacker and Auburn’s starting cornerbacks as well.

Here’s a positional rundown after the draft (RB not mentioned as nothing to note there).

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Franchise history, NFL draft, The roster

Is a new homegrown defense in the offing?

April 26, 2024 cc 2 Comments

Byron Murphy said he loved watching the Legion of Boom Seahawks when he was a kid. (For some of us a decade is not that long ago, but for a 21-year-old it was half his lifetime ago.)

The LOB was a dominant defense with a core that John Schneider put together mostly through the 2010-12 drafts: Earl Thomas, Kam Chancellor, K.J. Wright, Richard Sherman, Bobby Wagner, Bruce Irvin. Cliff Avril and Michael Bennett (Murphy’s favorite player on that defense) were the only core outside additions. And that group of stars dominated the NFL from 2012 to 2016.

Schneider has not been able to replicate that magic over the past decade. He had the perfect chance to do it again in 2016 and 2017, but he absolutely whiffed on most of his 11 picks on Days 1 and 2. Ever since those failures, he has been patching together his defense with trades for veterans.

But, thanks to three straight years with high picks in the draft, maybe he finally is building another core – this time for Mike Macdonald.

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NFL draft

Hawks stick and pick Byron Murphy II

April 25, 2024 cc Leave a comment

With almost every defensive player still available to them after 14 of the first 15 picks were offensive players, the Seahawks stayed at 16 and took the best interior defensive lineman, Byron Murphy II of Texas.

He was the Big 12 Defensive Lineman of the Year after notching five sacks and 8.5 tackles for loss. He also scored two TDs on offense.

Murphy is a 6-1, 297-pound D-tackle who should jump into the D-line rotation with the Seahawks, playing end in their 3-4 looks.

Here is what top analysts said about Murphy.

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NFL draft

Will Schneider make the right choice at 16?

April 24, 2024 cc 2 Comments

As John Schneider gets ready to run his first draft without Pete Carroll at his side, plenty of fans think everything is suddenly going to change – because of course Carroll was pulling all of the strings and was the reason the Seahawks were in the bottom third of the league in drafting success over the last decade.

Schneider debunked that idea earlier this month on his radio show, confirming Carroll had the power to “put his foot down” but he “rarely, rarely, rarely did that.”

“John was in control on draft day and will continue to be,” said Nolan Teasley, Seattle’s assistant GM. “The process stays consistent, so I don’t foresee a lot of change in that regard.”

That’s bad news for fans who thought Carroll was running the draft show all these years. Schneider has been pretty subpar at drafting ever since the historic 2010-12 run. According to a 2022 ESPN study, the Seahawks ranked first in the league in draft value since 2012.

But, if you take out that 2012 draft that netted Russell Wilson and Bobby Wagner and start with 2013, the Hawks ranked just 21^st in the league. The last 11 drafts have been middling or worse: The 2013 draft ranked in the bottom 11, the 2014 draft bottom eight, and the 2017 and 2019 drafts were not good either (DK Metcalf notwithstanding).

The last two draft classes have featured some high picks thanks to the Wilson trade, and now Schneider is picking 16^th – which puts him in a prime spot to get a true first-round talent for a third straight year.

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Franchise history, NFL draft

Will Schneider draft a guard who can start as a rookie?

April 21, 2024 cc 1 Comment

John Schneider could have afforded a top free-agent guard, but it’s a position he thinks is overpaid – and now he absolutely has to draft a guy who is capable of pushing for a starting spot as a rookie.

Seemingly 90% of mock drafts have him doing exactly that with the 16^th pick, taking Washington star Troy Fautanu. Mike Macdonald wants to be “a physical football team” and Fautanu certainly would help that happen.

But Schneider also thinks guards “get overdrafted,” and he recently signed former Jets starter Laken Tomlinson. So, unless Macdonald and Ryan Grubb (Fautanu’s OC at UW) really want Schneider to take Fautanu – and the lineman is there at 16 – it sure looks like Schneider will be angling to grab a guard later in the draft.

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Coaches, State of the team

Players: Macdonald and ‘right coaches’ bring ‘urgency’

April 19, 2024 cc Leave a comment

Amid the hullabaloo by some overly nostalgic fans about Mike Macdonald’s rearranging of the VMAC, his players seem to get it. They know Pete Carroll’s missing hoop and the temporarily blank walls are a metaphor for a clean slate, a new beginning.

They also know the expectations are much higher now and being delivered in a more defined, exacting way than Carroll and his staff were doing over the last few years.

It’s all as it should be, and the smart ones – players and fans – understand that. The players who don’t won’t be around very long. And that’s as it should be, too.

The core leaders of this defense – Leonard Williams, Uchenna Nwosu and Julian Love – sound bought in.

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Franchise history, NFL draft

History says Schneider should stick and pick

April 16, 2024 cc Leave a comment

The draft is next week, and John Schneider and his Seahawks have to figure out one big thing: Where are the ledges?

It’s the key to anything Schneider will do in this selection meeting. And he needs to tread carefully, lest he fall off the cliff again.

Schneider has not made a draft-day deal involving a first-round pick since 2019, but he will be tempted to do it this time after sending his second-rounder to the Giants for Leonard Williams and a third-rounder in the deal to get Sam Howell from Washington.

At 16, Schneider is sitting right in the crosshairs — and he knows it.

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Coaches, Free agency, The roster

Macdonald: ‘We want to set the standard in Seattle’

March 27, 2024 cc Leave a comment

In Pete Carroll’s last
season in Seattle, his
platitudes and vague
descriptors about what needed to be fixed on the defense had worn super thin and it was so obvious that he really had no idea how he was going to fix the weakest part of his team after years of failing.

That’s why it is so refreshing to hear Mike Macdonald
quietly but confidently talk about how elite his defense is going to be. He outlines it so clearly that you can just see it happening — and not taking long either.

Whether he is talking about how expectations lead to Super Bowl wins, about his motto of Chasing Edges or about “building a wall up the middle” of his defense, he sounds assured that all of these things will happen.

His resume supports his words, which is why he evokes such confidence from so much of the fan base – a huge turnaround from the last couple years of the fading Carroll era.

Here are some of the encouraging things Macdonald said at the NFL owners meetings in Orlando this week, as reported by Michael-Shawn Dugar of The Athletic and John Boyle of Seahawks.com.

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Free agency, The roster

The roster so far: ‘So much work still to do’

March 23, 2024 cc 1 Comment

“We’re trying to obviously get big up front and get really strong down the middle of our defense and then try to build from there.” – John Schneider on Seattle Sports 710

The Seahawks entered the offseason needing to fill six positions before they got to the draft. They have gone 5 for 6, re-signing Leonard Williams and Noah Fant, trading for Sam Howell and swapping out their linebackers and safeties.

Player for player, they made these swaps:

They also retained Michael Jackson, Darrell Taylor, Artie Burns, Jon Rhattigan and Myles Adams (ERFA). They brought back former UDFA George Fant, who will start at right tackle if Abe Lucas can’t and will play sixth man/super tight end and swing tackle if Lucas is healthy. They also added another backup guard, Tremayne Anchrum Jr.

They still have no left guard as John Schneider notably continues to avoid spending any money on interior linemen, but they otherwise have addressed all of their needs.

As Mike Macdonald told NFL Network at the league meetings in Orlando, “We have a plan in place, but you’re just trying to do your best day by day and stack days. And now we look back five or six weeks, I feel like we’ve made a lot of progress. But there’s just so much work still to do.”

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