The Seahawks have some players who haven’t reached their potential in Seattle. Here are four that are entering a make-or-break season in 2022.
The Seattle Seahawks have a ton of decisions to make in free agency this season. Whatever decisions are made should be with an overall picture in mind. If Seattle brings in a certain person, does it improve the team potentially in only 2022 or is that player a long-term answer at a position?
A lot of the decisions Seattle makes in free agency this offseason will be partly based on how they view some Seahawks entering the final years of their current deals in 2022. Can, for example, Cody Barton replace Bobby Wagner in the future? Or does Seattle need to look elsewhere for a potential Wagner replacement?
That said, the following four players need to be good next year to help make the team better but they also need to be good to earn their next contract.
4 Seahawks facing make-or-break seasons in 2022
Ugo Amadi
In the last seasons, Amadi has retroactively been given the full-time starter position at nickel. Marquise Blair was supposed to start in both years but Blair gets injured a lot. Amadi actually wasn’t terrible in 2020 but he certainly was in 2021. According to Pro Football Focus, Amadi graded at number 119 among all corners this season. That is 119 out of 120 total.
Amadi is a free agent after this year. He might not get the chance to start at nickel in 2022 or Seattle might decide to go with his experience there the last two years and pencil him in as a starter. If Amadi can be very good, he will return most likely in 2022. If he isn’t good, he might be out of the league.
Jason Myers
I will be honest here; I don’t like putting Jason Myers’ name on this list. Seattle has at times given up on kickers too quickly. Remember Stephen Hauschka? Seattle let him walk after the 2016 season (after Hauschka made 33 of 37 field goal attempts) and he went to Buffalo in 2017 and made 29 of 33 kicks for the Bills, including 7 of 9 from beyond 50 yards. Seattle replaced Hauschka with Blair Walsh who was just 21 of 29 for Seattle in 2017.
One issue with Myers heading into 2022 is that he is due to make $5 million which is a chunk of change for a kicker. Myers struggled with consistency to start 2021. Through Week 13, Myers had made just 9 of 14 field goal attempts and had missed inside the 40 yard line for the first time since 2018.
But Myers did finish strong by making 8 of 9 field goals in the last five games of the year and made all of his 15 extra point attempts in the final four games. Myers should still be a member of the Seahawks next year because he is good enough to be.
But after that he is a free agent and if Myers plays a full 2022 like he started 2021 then Myers is going to be playing for another team in 2023 because Seattle could choose their next kicker in the 2023 NFL draft and save a bunch of money.
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.
Cody Barton
For three seasons, Cody Barton has had no home on defense. He played fewer than 16 percent of snaps each season. The Seahawks had veteran linebackers entrenched as starters. Mostly that has been Bobby Wagner and K.J. Wright but in 2021, Jordyn Brooks replaced Wright. Barton has been decent in short stretches but Wright and Wagner were better.
But the Seahawks have a huge decision to make this offseason in regards to Wagner. Seattle’s future likely first-ballot Hall of Famer is due to make $20.350 million next year. I would be shocked if Seattle brings Wagner back at that contract. Wagner is still good – he made the Pro Bowl again this season – but few players are worth that amount of cap space on their respective teams who aren’t quarterbacks.
Wagner was injured early in Week 17 this season and Barton replaced him. And Barton was pretty good. Against the Lions, Barton was in on 7 tackles, had 1 quarterback hit (Wagner had only 3 QB hits in 2021) and a tackle for loss (Wagner only had 3 TFLs this year). Wagner had to miss Week 18 and Barton replaced him and Barton finished with 11 tackles.
Barton is due to make $1,186,031 in 2022 in the final year of his current deal. Wagner is doing to make $19 million more dollars than that. Releasing Wagner saves Seattle nearly $17 million. This means if Barton replaces Wagner in 2022, Seattle will basically be saving $16 million by trading out starters. Is Wagner $16 million better than Barton?