4 players the Seahawks need to move on from this offseason
By Lee Vowell
Unless something extremely unexpected happens, the Seahawks will not have nearly as much of a chaotic offseason in 2023 as they did in 2022. Last offseason, Russell Wilson was traded and Bobby Wagner was released. Two likely future Hall of Famers left the team on the same day, March 8th. Losing those two players meant a shift in how the team would move forward.
The idea was probably to take a beating for a year while Seattle remade the roster with younger players. Get lucky on several of the 2022 draftees and Seattle might be relevant again by 2024. Instead, many of the rookies were better sooner than expected and Seattle actually made the playoffs this year. 2023, with another good group of rookies hopefully, should be even better.
Of course, it also helped that quarterback Geno Smith was as good as he was for most of the year. No one, not even the ever-optimistic Pete Carroll, could have known just how good Smith could be. But Smith ended up having one of the best seasons by a Seahawks quarterback ever.
Like every NFL team, though, Seattle will have some tough decisions on which players to keep and which ones to let go. Seattle does need upgrades at many spots on the roster, but few players were glaringly awful. But the following four players shouldn’t be brought back.
Seahawks should let go of safety Josh Jones
Jones is 28 years old and likely on the back end of his career. It isn’t like he is old but he simply isn’t very good. Jones doesn’t do anything in particular very well. For some reason, after Jamal Adams was hurt in Week 1, the Seahawks replaced Adams with Jones. This was even after watching Ryan Neal play pretty well in the last couple of seasons when Adams was hurt and Neal replaced him.
After a few weeks of seeing Jones not do very well, Neal replaced Jones and the entire defense improved for a bit. The highest-graded safety in the NFL this season is Neal, per Pro Football Focus (subscription required). Jones is 83rd.
In coverage in 2022, teams have completed 13 of 18 passes when targeting Jones. Worse, Jones has allowed 17.6 yards a completion. But Jones simply is a terrible tackler. He has missed 25 percent of his tackles this season and a player that misses that much shouldn’t see the field.