How the Seahawks secondary can be great in 2021

New Seahawks cornerbacks

Cornerback is where the salary cap has had the most impact on the Seahawks as they did not have the funds to retain last year’s starting corners, Shaquill Griffin and Quinton Dunbar, and thus lost both of these to free agency.

The loss of Griffin is a painful blow, although on last season’s efforts Dunbar is not going to be greatly missed. Once again, alongside Kerry Hyder and picked up another former 49er from free agency in Ahkello Witherspoon to replace Griffin.

Witherspoon appeared in 47 games in his four seasons with the 49ers, although never securing a regular starting role in San Fran he looked pretty good when he was on the field and had an average rating from pff.com of 65 during that time.

This is identical to Griffin’s PFF.com rating for the same period and indeed higher than Griffin’s rating last season.

Now, I am not arguing that Witherspoon is as good as Griffin, but what I am saying is that paying Witherspoon $4 million per year rather than the $10-15 million per year the Jags will be paying Griffin was the best option available given the salary cap issues.

Witherspoon is only 26 and was drafted 66th overall in 2017, the 11th cornerback taken that year. So he has some potential upside to that 65 rating.

Tre Flowers looks likely to be the starting left corner in 2021, although Damarious Randall could see time at the corner too. Flowers was pretty much the starter last season following Dunbar’s knee injury in mid-November and performed poorly in all honesty. If the experiment of moving Randall from safety to corner pans out, this provides a potential upgrade/solution

Kudos to the ‘Hawks for seeking a resourceful solution but this has to be more of a hope than expectation.

So using either the 2nd or 4th round draft pick the Seahawks on a corner has to be an option worth considering now that they have covered of DE with the acquisition of Aldon Smith alongside the re-signing of Carlos Dunlap.