There is always good luck involved in every championship. For the Seattle Seahawks in 2025, Zach Charbonnet’s crucial two-point conversion against the Rams last December may have been the flukiest play of the season. Seattle was also relatively lucky with injuries. Charbonnet’s ACL was the only truly awful one.
But that does not mean the Seahawks dodged the injury bug all year. No team does. They lost several up-and-comers like Tory Horton and Elijah Arroyo in the middle of the season. On defense, much of the secondary missed time. And on the offensive line, Charles Cross and Jalen Sundell both missed multiple games.
Fortunately, general manager John Schneider has constructed a very deep roster. I have previously written that Seattle’s backup linemen could start for about a quarter of the league. Josh Jones and Olu Oluwatimi – the primary fill-ins for Cross and Sundell last year – lead the way on the second team. That has some people wondering if perhaps one of those linemen might be on the trading block.
Will the Seattle Seahawks trade Olu Oluwaitimi?
Moe Moton of Bleacher Report identified Oluwatimi as the Seahawks player most likely to be traded. That doesn’t mean any deal is in the offing. It simply means that if Schneider were looking to move a player and pick up some late-round draft capital, the center from Michigan makes the most sense.
I agree up to a point. I think you could make an equally good case for linebacker Tyrice Knight as being most tradeable. But it is very close.
The Oluwatimi whispers are nothing new. He started the second half of 2024 and was displaced last year by Sundell. Any time a starter is beaten out for his position, speculation spreads. In Oluwatimi’s case, there is an obvious logic to the idea.
Oluwatimi has never been Seattle’s first choice at center. After being selected in the fifth round of the 2023 draft, he served as a backup to Evan Brown during his rookie season.
When Brown left via free agency the following year, it seemed as if Oluwatimi would inherit the job. Instead, one month before the season, Schneider brought in Connor Williams, who was returning from a serious ACL injury. Williams immediately assumed the starting role,
But Williams decided to retire at mid-season, and Oluwatimi inherited the job. He didn’t play badly. Nonetheless, he was beaten out by Sundell before the 2025 season and once again returned to the bench.
So in his three seasons, Oluwatimi has been bested by three different centers. The first two were veterans, but Sundell was an undrafted free agent just entering his second season. Barring injury, it seems highly unlikely that Olu Oluwatimi will ever be the Seahawks' starting center again.
The thing is, he has been pretty good whenever he has gotten the chance to play. Not great by any means, but serviceable. If that sounds like damning with faint praise, I should note that there are a lot of teams who would like a serviceable man at center. Two of them are right next to each other on the East Coast.
Baltimore lost three-time Pro Bowler Tyler Linderbaum to a major free agency contract. Washington inexplicably released Tyler Biadasz this offseason. As of today, both have journeymen free agents penciled in as starting centers.
Those players, Danny Pinter in Baltimore and Nick Allegretti in Washington, are career backups. You could say the same for Oluwatimi, but the Seattle player does appear to have better potential going forward.
Would either Washington or Baltimore – or perhaps some other team – be willing to part with a late-round draft pick to add some competition and insurance in front of Lamar Jackson and Jayden Daniels?
Maybe. Perhaps a bigger question is whether Schneider would really trade a decent, low-priced backup for a sixth or seventh-round pick? That will depend on other players.
Federico Maranges is the only other true center currently on the roster. We haven't seen enough of him to have an opinion, but it is hard to imagine that Mike Macdonald would want to rely on an untested center from Florida Atlantic to go up against Kobie Turner or – horrors – Aaron Donald at a key moment late in the season.
One of the things to watch for through the summer is whether other players take snaps at center. Christian Haynes dipped his toe in at center in a few practices last year, and though he did not play the position in college, some scouts think Bryce Cabeldue could thrive in the role.
It most likely comes down to this – if a player like Haynes or Cabeldue looks good enough this summer, it becomes more likely that Schneider will seek to trade Oluwatimi. But that’s a fairly big “if.”
I think I would have chosen Tyrice Knight as the player most likely to be traded. Knight has shown more as a pro than Oluwatimi and has extra value as a very good special-teams player. His position is not as valuable as center, primarily because there is only one center on the field compared to multiple linebackers. But Knight could join a team and make a decent impact rather quickly.
As with Oluwatimi, Knight lost his starting job to a UDFA, though in that case, injuries were a factor. With Ernest Jones IV and Drake Thomas now settled at the position, Schneider’s willingness to trade Knight will also depend on how well other young depth players perform this summer. If Patrick O’Connell and Chazz Surratt earn Macdonald’s trust, Knight could be available.
As of now, Schneider has a better draft position for 2027 than he had in 2026. He gave up a fourth-rounder for the right to draft Beau Stephens this year, but has an extra pick in the seventh as a result of the Michael Jerrell trade last year.
Schneider does not have to make any trades. But if the right offer comes along, he has shown that he will. Oluwatimi and Knight would seem to be the most likely candidates.
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