ESPN Insiders give Seahawks a passing grade in free agency, barely
By Dan Viens
ESPN.com’s Mike Sando posted grades for how every NFL team has fared in free agency so far. He gave the Seahawks a C+. Is it fair?
Much has been made of the Seahawks failure to make any moves on the offensive line that look like obvious upgrades. They also lost some big-name players to other teams. But when ESPN’s Mike Sando got together with other ESPN “Insiders” to grade every NFL team on how they’ve done in free agency, they were fairly kind to Seattle.
Most gave the credit to John Schneider for keeping some of the Seahawks own free agents in town, most notably CB Jeremy Lane and WR Jermaine Kearse.
T.J. Yates had this to say about those moves: “The players they lost got good deals from other teams, except for Okung. I also look at who they kept. Those were good value signings. The Lane deal was very reasonable for a No. 2 corner. The Kearse deal was smart for both sides.”
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Sando himself, who used to be a beat writer for the team, made the case that the Seahawks were at a disadvantage this offseason but fared about as well as they could:
“The Seahawks were another good team with a high-priced quarterback suffering the usual offseason attrition. The deals for Lane and Kearse made sense, as did re-signing Rubin. Losing Irvin was a given. Losing Okung was likely. It’s tough getting better when you’re mostly trying to minimize losses,” Sando said.
Former Tampa Bay General Manager Mark Dominik agreed with Sando; ““I think it was all understood that this was what was going to happen,” Dominik said. “It is hard to beat up the organization. They did nothing wrong. But when you identify your core, your 7-8 guys, you can only pay so many guys. That is just what you do.”
Next: Seahawks pre-draft depth chart
Elsewhere in the NFC West, the group gave the Arizona Cardinals a B+, the Los Angeles Rams a C+, and the San Fransico 49ers a C.