Roster cutdown is the most hectic and emotionally fraught day of the Seattle Seahawks' football season. Seventeen hundred athletes find work in their chosen field for another year. More than one thousand of their colleagues are told they do not have a job. Many of those in the second group will get another chance, sometimes within hours of their first rejection.
But you never know. Athletes who compete at the highest levels of sport all understand that it could end in a flash. Cutdown day is one of those flashpoints.
Many of the 53 players who got good news from the Seahawks on Tuesday knew they were in no real danger. They were locks. Except, as it turns out, every year, some of them really weren’t locks. And others had a lifetime of dreams all come true when the clock struck four and they were still wearing Seahawks gear.
Seattle Seahawks winners and losers on cutdown day
WINNER: the 2024 backup receivers
Last year at this time, Seattle had three clear starting receivers. Behind them, Jake Bobo, Laviska Shenault, Jr., and Dee Williams had the backup roles. By the end of the season, Shenault and Williams were gone, replaced by Cody White and Dareke Young.
Along with Bobo, those three reserves would play just over 400 snaps on offense, almost all of them coming from Bobo. All told, they caught 15 passes for 151 yards.
It was commonly assumed that Seattle would look for more production out of their second-team receivers this year, but when the dust settled, Bobo, White, and Young still had their spots. Special teams performance figured into the decision in a big way, but all showed progress in the preseason and may see a little more action on offense this year.
LOSER: Marquez Valdes-Scantling
The three back-ups' success came partly at the expense of veteran Valdes-Scantling. He was signed as a mid-level free agent to help take the place of DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett. MVS has always been a mercurial deep threat. He didn’t catch many balls playing under Klint Kubiak in New Orleans in 2024, but he made them count 22.6 yards per catch.
Throughout the preseason, it became clear that rookie Tory Horton was passing MVS, and since he did not excel on special teams, Bobo, White, and Young were also deemed more essential. MVS had seemed like a roster lock until just a few weeks ago, but it didn't work out in Seattle. There has already been talk of several other teams interested in giving the deep threat another chance.
WINNER: Mason Richman
In 2024, John Schneider chose three offensive linemen in the NFL draft. They all made the roster. This year, he did it again. But it didn’t seem likely that the final pick, seventh-rounder Mason Richman, had a very good shot of making the final 53. Most projections had the practice squad as his ceiling.
Well, the Seahawks will begin the 2025 without any of those three 2024 picks on the active roster, and all three of the new lineman still here. Richman was a tackle in college but most analysts had him switching to guard in the pros.
He showed in preseason that he could play outside if necessary, a revelation that eventually led to Schneider dealing away 2024 draftee Michael Jerrell and keeping Richman as his fourth tackle.
LOSER: Size across the defensive front
Seattle entered training camp with Johnathan Hankins, Brendan Pili, and Quentin Bohanna penciled in as possible nose tackles. That is 999 pounds in the middle of the field designed to clog running lanes and collapse the pocket.
The veteran Hankins was injured during camp and didn’t get a chance to show what he could do, but both Pili and Bohanna played well, showing bursts uncommon in such large men. Most analysts thought that Pili had secured a spot and that perhaps one of the other nose tackles could join him.
As it turns out, none of them made the cut. Hankins landed on the Reserve/Non-Football Injury list with an uncertain future, while Pili and Bohanna were released.
Both might return to the practice squad, but for now, Seattle seems content to move forward with the same set of linemen who played last year, each of whom weighs in around the 300-pound mark, which is roughly 30 pounds less than the players who were released.
WINNER: Young edge rushers
But if Mike Macdonald bypassed newer, younger players in the middle of the defensive line, he showed the opposite preference on the edge.
Jared Ivey and Connor O’Toole, both 23-year-old undrafted free agents, showed enough speed and athleticism to win spots on the outside. Throughout the preseason, the two young players amassed 25 tackles, 1.5 sacks, and a tackle-for-loss.
Their statuses may not have been determined until the final preseason game, when both went out and demanded a spot. O’Toole made seven tackles. Ivey was credited with nine, along with a half sack. They simply made too many plays to be denied.