Of the Seahawks on the roster bubble, where is Barkevious Mingo?

An excellent site just published a list of Seahawks they believed to be on the roster bubble. It all made sense, but where was Barkevious Mingo?

The Seahawks will face a lot of tough choices on the roster this summer. I think their toughest cuts will come at the linebacker position, as they seem to have an embarrassment of riches there. Yeah, I know, I just cursed them to lose five players; sorry. Seriously, Seattle has great depth at the position. So when spotrac.com listed the players most likely to be on the bubble, I was quite surprised that they didn’t include Barkevious Mingo among the potential cuts.

A couple of clarifications are due here. First, the article covers the entire NFL, not just Seattle. Second, I think Michael Ginnitti did a great job, even going out on some surprisingly long limbs at times (Eli Manning, for instance). The players are listed by position, not by team. Happily, 247 Sports has a great writeup on the six Seahawks Mr. Ginnitti chose for the ax. Derek Lewis wrote an excellent critique of the selections. I agree with both writers on the six potential cuts.

However, I’m surprised neither mentioned Mingo as a potential cap casualty. I know I’ve mentioned him as a potential cut before, but it’s not like I hate the guy. As far as I can see, he’s given the Seahawks all he has. The problem as I see it, that isn’t enough. It certainly isn’t enough at his salary.

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If I asked you who has the sixth-highest cap hit of all the Hawks this season, I doubt you’d guess it was Mingo. Good thing, too, because it’s actually Tyler Lockett. But surprisingly, Mingo is seventh, sandwiched between Lockett and K.J. Wright. Now go find one person who thinks Mingo was almost as valuable as Lockett and more valuable than Wright. Good luck; you’ll be the Diogenes of football.

Seahawks are paying a lot for a little performance

Lockett’s cap hit is $7.357 million, Mingo’s is $5.3 million, and Wright’s is $4,984,375. Thanks to spotrac.com for the Hawks cap figures. As all good 12s know, Wright missed a lot of time last year and only got into five games. Meanwhile, Mingo appeared in all 16 contests and is credited with 14 starts. To be more accurate, Wright got 223 snaps on defense, while Mingo had 517 (plus another 373 on special teams). Let’s just count defensive snaps, though, as it’s pretty hard to register a pass defense or a sack on a kick-off.

Mingo had 2.31 times the opportunities as Wright. Mingo had 9.28 combined tackles per 100 snaps, while Wright had 10.31. Mingo did register a sack and one pass defense. Wright had three pass defenses, though, in less than half the chances. Not that you needed me to tell you, but Wright was clearly the better player, even last year in just five games.

A more instructive comparison is to Mychal Kendricks. He only made it into four games before an injury forced him out for the year, but he was lighting it up until then. Kendricks got just 183 snaps on defense, just one on special teams, so he had even fewer chances than Wright. He certainly made the most of it, as his 19 tackles equate to 10.38 per 100 chances. He also had two sacks and one pass defense. That’s two part-time players that outperformed the full-time Mingo.

Yeah, I know Mingo doesn’t play the weakside backer, so Wright isn’t his competition. But Kendricks is. Shaquem Griffin is certainly in competition with Mingo to play more edge rush. I agree with Lee Vowell’s assessment of that competition, too. Whether Mingo is seen as an edge rusher or more traditional Sam linebacker, Seattle has a lot of cheaper (and better) players available. Mingo carries just $1.1 million in dead cap space, so it certainly wouldn’t be a huge hit to let him walk.

He may light it up this summer and force the Hawks to keep him. That would be great, but I don’t see it happening. For one, he has 10 career sacks in six seasons. Granted, he didn’t get many starts for most of those years, just 37. That alone tells you something though, right? Mingo has had 2,654 defensive snaps in his career. And just ten sacks and 198 combined tackles. That’s less than 7.5 tackles per 100 snaps. Do you really think Seattle needs to keep him as their seventh-highest paid player? I’d love for him to prove me wrong, but I sure don’t.