Free Agency Winding Down

The free agency “season” has slowed to crawl. There are few names still unsigned that will draw any sort of nation attention. Most of the signing that have happened in this past week didn’t even get a mention on Sports Center. A career backup changing uniforms isn’t really news.

And yet, this is where the real masters do their magic. Green Bay is notorious for sitting out the first week or 2 of free agency, and then finally getting involved in this phase of the game and manage to unearth solid players who can contribute in their system. The Seahawks have also been busy in this part of free agency over the past couple offseasons; adding guys like Alan Branch and Mike Williams.

Unfortunately, it’s impossible for those of us covering the team to to get too excited over any of these signings. Alan Branch was a backup who had a difficult time getting on the field. There’s no way I could have predicted that he would end up being one of the top run stuffing DTs in the entire league.

Still, most of the players signed this late in the free agency period never matter much in the coming season. For every Mike Williams who expectedly leads his team in receiving, there’s 15 players who don’t even make the final roster of the team that signs them. Most of the players capable of making a difference for their new team are already off the market.

It should be noted that both Leroy Hill and David Hawthorne remain unsigned at this point. If you read this blog regularly, that shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. Both are wildly overrated by the Seattle fanbase. Hill was particularly bad in 2011, causing the Seahawks to rank dead last against backs on passing downs. Hawthorne was better, but he was still well below average against the pass. Both also have injury conerns. and are reluctant to play on special teams.

Hawthorne has garnered some interest on the free agent market, but not all that much. I expect him to re-sign with the Seahawks soon on very team friendly contract.

From what I can gather, no team has yet to show interest in signing Hill, not even the Seahawks. While I do expect him to go to training camp with a team somewhere, I don’t expect that it will be with Seattle.