Seahawks sit out frantic start to free agency
By Keith Myers
The Seattle Seahawks have been mostly silent as most of the top players available in free agency have signed with other NFL teams.
The NFL free agency period kicked off with a whirlwind of activity. Almost a billion dollars in new contracts were handed at around the league as teams used up and unprecedented amount of open salary-cap space. Meanwhile, the Seattle Seahawks did virtually nothing.
Seattle entered the offseason wanting to add a starter to their offensive line. GM John Schneider said the week before that the Seahawks had gotten “too young” on the line, and the team was going to fix that.
The Seahawks decided that their best bet was former Packers guard TJ Lang. They brought him in, offered him a reasonable contract, but refused to overpay. Then watched him leave and sign with the Detroit Lions.
Meanwhile, all the other options were quickly signed by other teams. Rickey Wagner, Reily Reiff, Matt Kalil, Andrew Whitworth and everyone else signed and were no longer on the market. Seattle left completely without any viable options.
The Seahawks put all their eggs in one basket, and then threw the basket off an overpass and into the traffic below.
Once again the Seahawks misjudged the OL market. They failed to figure out who they could and could not sign during the “tampering period.” Once again, they let a chance to fix their biggest weakness go by without action.
If all of this feels familiar, it because it is exactly the same thing that happened a year ago with Alex Mack. Seattle went hard after one guy, failed to get him, and then were left trying to cobble together a working line out of pieces found on the scrap heap.
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In the end, the Seahawks settled on Luke Joeckel. He’s a draft bust coming off a surgery to repair 3 ligaments in his knee.
At least the Seahawks know exactly where the OL scrape heap is.