The Seattle Seahawks are 6-4 and have lost some very winnable games. Week 6 against the Cincinnati Bengals and Week 11 against the Los Angeles Rams should have been wins and Seattle would be 8-2. Now Seattle faces the toughest four-game stretch of its season.
Seattle won't be favored in at least its next four games so the bookmakers will expect the Seahawks to be 6-8 by the time Week 16 comes along. Still, head coach Pete Carroll has seemed to pull victory from the jaws of defeat many times before. Maybe 12s will be happily surprised by Week 16.
Still, win or lose, some Seattle players have not performed well this year. For two of the players that follow, the poor play trend continues from previous years. For the other player, they are new to Seattle and shouldn't come back next year.
Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Dee Eskridge doesn't deserve a seat
I honestly have no idea why Dee Eskridge is still on the team. To be fair every time a pass is aimed his way - a throw, mind you, that is literally 50/50 on whether the pass will be completed because Eskridge runs such poor routes and doesn't know how to create space between him and his defender - I think, "Oh yeah...I forgot about that guy." In his three-year career, Eskridge has been targeted 34 times and he has caught 17 of them for an average of 7.2 yards per reception. The worst play that the Seahawks ran in Week 11 was when on third-and-one Geno Smith threw the ball toward Eskridge because the likelihood of picking up a first down on the play was so remote (the pass fell incomplete, of course).
Not only has Eskridge remained to be injured or ineffective in his career, earlier this year he was suspended six games for a domestic issue. Why the Seahawks did not just release him then is anyone's guess as Eskridge cost Seattle more money to keep on the roster than to kick him to the curb. And he has proven he isn't going to be productive.
Next year, Eskridge has a cap hit of $1,894,296 and a dead cap of only $422,455. There is no financial reason to keep him on the team. The rest of this year he is simply taken up an active spot on game days where another player, such as running back Kenny McIntosh who has been inactive every game since he was cleared to practice a few weeks ago, might actually provide production. So far in 2023, Eskridge has missed his only pass target and has rushed once for negative-five yards. He actually makes the team worse by playing.
Center Evan Brown doesn't deserve a seat
At the beginning of the season, Evan Brown looked like a pretty good free-agent signing. He was big and strong and seemed to be an upgrade over the 2022 starter at center, Austin Blythe. Through the first four games, Brown had a decent grade, according to Pro Football Focus (subscription required), and was a top-15 center. But all of his best individually graded games this year came in those first four games.
In fact, Brown's three worst-graded games have come in the last three weeks. He is OK in pass protection, but horrible in run blocking. In 2022, the Seahawks had 47 runs of 12-plus yards, seventh in the NFL, and an average of 2.8 per game. This year through 10 games, Seattle has just 18 such runs, an average of 1.8 yards per game. So because the running game is less effective, Seattle is losing a play a game of 12-plus yards.
2023 is Brown's worst-graded run-blocking season since 2020. Is the issue the player or the scheme? There cannot be blame for Brown's poor play put on the Seahawks having to use a bunch of different linemen either, because the first four games were rough in terms of which lineman was available and who was playing where and those were Brown's best games. He has digressed for some reason and his one-year free-agent deal seems like it will be just that: One season.
Edge rusher Darrell Taylor doesn't deserve a seat
Darrell Taylor is a restricted free agent next offseason. Seattle could place a tender on him and if another team signs him, Seattle will get a draft pick back in compensation. If I am another team and thinking of maybe signing Taylor I might just pass based on the tender. Taylor was awful against the run before 2023, but at least he was at times decent in pass rush. But this year, he isn't good at any facet of the game.
In 2022, Taylor had 9.5 sacks, but this season he has just 2.5. He is a streaky player and can get a bunch of sacks in a few games, and that has sort of continued into this season as well as his sacks came in back-to-back games in Weeks 7 and 8. But he also has just 4 quarterback hits in 2023 (13 in both 2021 and 2022) and 3 tackles for loss (8 in 2022 and 7 in 2021).
According to PFF, Taylor's pass rush grade is 52.6 this year, by far the worst mark of his three-year career. PFF has only credited Darrell Taylor with 1 quarterback hit, however, whereas Pro Football Reference has Taylor listed with 4. Taylor continues to miss far too many tackles as he has a missed tackle rate of 26.4 percent in his career. That is atrocious.
At this point, Taylor has had two-plus years to prove himself and he has gotten worse in some ways. The areas he was decent in prior to 2023 he has not improved. There is no reason to keep him on the team after this season.