Predicting The First 15 Cuts For The Seattle Seahawks

September 30, 2012; St. Louis, MO, USA; St. Louis Rams wide receiver Danny Amendola (16) avoids Seattle Seahawks free safety Chris Maragos (42) on a punt return during the first half at the Edward Jones Dome. Mandatory Credit: Scott Rovak-USA TODAY Sports

The Seahawks will be cutting down their roster from 90 to 75 tomorrow afternoon. I figured that was as good of an excuse as I’ll probably find to make a fool of my self by trying to predict the 15 players that will be cut by Saturday’s deadline.

Before I started looking for players who could be let go, I wanted to go over some of the criteria that leads to players getting cut in the drop to 75. It’s not always just the bottom 15 players on the roster.

Veterans: This is something we saw a year ago with Terrell Owen and Duece Lutui. Veteran players who aren’t going to make the team tend to get cut in this first round of cuts. This is presumably to give them extra time to catch on with another team. Consider it a professional courtesy.

Camp Bodies: These are players who never had any real chance to make the roster, but were here entirely to help use up some of the reps in practice. This is especially true for those here to cover for injured players who are now returning to practice.

Cap and trade effects: There are players who fit the above requirements but wont be on the chopping block yet because the team will look to trade them before cutting them. There are also players whom you wouldn’t count in the “veterans” category, but are there because of their cap number.

Other Considerations: Keep in mind that there will still be another preseason game after this round of cuts, and that the starters generally don’t play very much, if they play at all. Team will keep players beyond this round of cuts that have zero shot at the roster just to make sure that certain roster players aren’t stuck playing too many plays in that game. This is why Brady Quinn wont be cut now, he’s going to be needed to play a half next week.

One that thing I should point out before I get into the names: I am generally terrible of predicting the cut down to 75. If you disagree with my assessment here, that’s probably a good thing. Last year, I think I got only 8 of 15 right, though I believe that the other 7 were cut in the drop to 53, so at least I didn’t miss that badly.

Here are the players I expect to not make the drop to 75:

TE Andrei Lintz

TE/LB Jameson Konz

WR Donavan Kemp

WR Brett Swaine

WR Perez Ashford

WR Arceto Clark

OG Jared Smith

DT Michael Brooks

DT Parker Martin

LB Heath Farwell

LB Craig Wilkins

LB Ty Powell

CB Ron Parker

FS Chris Maragos

LS Kyle Nelson

Maragos and Farwell are the names on the list, but both are overpaid and have been outplayed in camp by young/cheaper players. Other than them, I’m not sure any of the other players will be missed all that much.

Because of the injuries Clemons, Avril, Hill, McDaniels, and Williams, I stayed away from cutting too many defensive linemen. This actually made it fairly tough to find 15 players. The defensive backfield was also tough to pull players from, because the CBs who aren’t going to make the roster have trade value, so I don’t think they’ll drop any besides Parker now.

The battles on the O-line and the fact that I think that all the RB will make the roster, along with what I mentioned in the last paragraph, left the LB and WR positions both being hit hard with cuts. Ultimately this is likely why my predictions are probably wrong. I couldn’t pull the trigger on guys like Seymore or Person, but John Schneider doesn’t seem to have that problem.

I’m sure this is way off. Feel free to tell me where you think I went wrong.