Do the Seattle Seahawks need another wide receiver? More specifically, do 12s want to see former San Francisco 49ers outcast Deebo Samuel play his home games at Lumen Field? Maybe not, though the move might make more sense than it appears at first glance.
Samuel toiled with the 49ers from 2019 through 2024, battling seemingly constant injury issues, and not being afraid to be vocal about his frustrations with how head coach Kyle Shanahan was calling offensive plays at times. That isn't a very Seahawks-y approach.
Yet, FOX Sports NFL analyst Ben Arthur recently floated the suggestion that Samuel, who is currently a free agent, land in Seattle. The obvious connection is that while the receiver was employed in San Francisco, so was the new Seahawks offensive coordinator Brian Fleury. The two would know what to expect from one another.
FOX Sports analyst links Deebo Samuel to the Seattle Seahawks
"New Seahawks offensive coordinator Brian Fleury and the 30-year-old Samuel overlapped in San Francisco from 2019-24," Ben Arthur writes, "including for Samuel’s First-Team All-Pro season in 2021."
Arthur's only real flaw in his thinking is that he also points out the Seattle receiving corps as Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Rashid Shaheed, and Cooper Kupp. He is forgetting, as most people who don't cover Seattle closely, that Tory Horton is also on the roster and could be set up for an explosive season in 2026.
Before he injured his shin and missed the second half of the season, he had six total touchdowns in eight games. One was on a 95-yard punt return. While Horton and Samuel are completely different kinds of receivers (Samuel is big enough to play running back at times, too), Horton is seemingly more explosive.
In fact, it is the presence of Horton, not JSN, Shaheed, or Kupp, that makes the Seattle Seahawks' signing Deebo Samuel so unlikely. Sure, a natural connection exists between Fleury and the former 49ers receiver, but one also needs to remember that Samuel's time in San Francisco didn't end that well.
Fluery might advise general manager John Schneider not to chase the wide receiver in free agency. The offensive coordinator might tell head coach Mike Macdonald that Samuel would be a poor fit in Seattle's locker room.
A risk does exist in the Seahawks' wide receiver group, of course. Shaheed is a solid receiver, but his value truly lies in his versatility, especially as a kick and punt returner. Kupp could be injured again, as he was with the Los Angeles Rams, and miss a chunk of the season. Smith-Njigba could come nowhere near the production he had last season when he led the NFL in receiving yards.
Samuel, though, might not help in any of those situations. This is especially true if, as Spotrac suggests, his market value is nearly $16 million a year over the next two seasons. He isn't worth that for the Seahawks.
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