4 Seahawks heading into a make-or-break season in 2022

L.J. Collier

What happened to L.J. Collier in 2021? He went from a starter in all 2020 games and wasn’t a bad player to being a healthy scratch in most games in the early part of 2021. From Week 12 on, Collier played in every game. Before Week 12, Collier had played in three games total. And in the 10 games Collier did play, he had a quarterback hit in five of them. He didn’t seem to be playing extremely poorly which means something else was going on.

What was going on, if anything? No idea. But how else to explain Collier going from a starter who played 49 percent of all Seattle defensive snaps in 2020 to being a player who played 18.7 percent of snaps in 2021? Again, it wasn’t that Collier didn’t produce statistics relative to his teammates; Most of them underachieved in 2021.

Collier was a first round draft pick in 2019, though, which means he is still under contract for one more season. No Seahawks player has more individual pressure on them to earn their next contract than Collier does next year. He could earn a bigger contract in 2023 with great play in 2022 or be barely hanging on to his career.

It also doesn’t make much sense for Seattle to release him. Collier’s cap hit in 2022 is $3.448 million and his dead cap is $2.462 million so there is a $1 million saving in releasing him. That shouldn’t be enough to give up on a 26-year-old defensive lineman who hasn’t been unhealthy or completely unproductive.