Another look at Blair Walsh, Steven Hauschka and the Seahawks

Blair Walsh has become the scapegoat, punching bag, and overall bad karma kid for the Seahawks. Letting Steven Hauschka walk was still the right move.

It’s easy to blame soon to be former Seattle kicker Blair Walsh for the end of the Seahawks postseason run. It’s easy because it’s true, to some extent. You can’t miss three field goals in one game without shouldering a lot of blame. You can’t choke down the stretch run, either. Lee has already artfully dissected the Blair Walsh project, and I agree with him completely.

I especially agree with his comment, “Schneider’s worst mistake wasn’t letting Hauschka go, it was in signing Walsh.” Dead on. Walsh was the wrong choice, certainly. But Hauschka did not have a good year in 2016. To hear some fans, you’d think he’d been perfect. His field goal percentage was fine at 89 percent. Yeah, we wish we’d gotten that out of Blair Walsh. But Hauschka missed six extra points. With a team like the Seahawks, every point counts, obviously.

Of course John Schneider wouldn’t have signed Walsh if he knew this would be the result. More than anything, the Seahawks should have been looking for another kicker when Walsh started going south in mid-season, as Lee wrote.

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So who else was available? A lot of guys

Other possible candidates for the job at season’s start? Josh Lambo, for one. The Jaguars signed him for $615,000, almost half a million less than Walsh. The cap-strapped Seahawks could have used that room later in the season and kept Dwight Freeney, for instance.

Chandler Catanzaro was another good player available. He signed with the Jets for $900,000, still cheaper than Walsh. Like Walsh, he only hit 75% of his field goals in 2016. Unlike him, he hit 91% of his extra point attempts. I’m certainly no general manager or NFL scout, but I just found two guys coming off better years than Walsh for less money. Surely the Seahawks could have done the same.

As for mid-season, Cairo Santos was available. Yes, he was coming off an injury and re-injured it later. But if the Seahawks had a Magic Eight Ball – I mean, a classic original made with glass, not plastic – they never would have signed Walsh anyway. Nick Rose, that darn pizza delivery kid that helped beat the Seahawks in the Redskins debacle wasn’t signed until mid-October. The point is, there’s always a kicker out there.

The Hauschka move was about more than the kicker

Don’t forget about the money, the main reason for the move. Who else did the Seahawks get with the money they saved from Hauschka’s contract? How about safety Bradley McDougald? McDougald was in for nearly 700 plays, and was much better than either rookie safety. You can’t ignore that re-signing Hauschka would have put the defensive backfield in an even bigger bind without McDougald.

Think of it this way. All partnerships aren’t perfect. If they were, the divorce rate in the United States wouldn’t be over 50 percent. And no one breaks up more often than NFL teams and their kickers. This is one breakup that should have happened sooner, or never have been a relationship at all.