When John Schneider met with the media at the NFL Scouting Combine earlier this month, the Seahawks’ general manager and president of football operations knew two things were true when it came to his team’s roster with free agency about to begin.
One, Schneider and the Seahawks wanted to keep as much of their Super Bowl-winning team intact as possible, and two, Schneider knew that keeping everyone would be all but impossible. NFL teams have a decent amount of turnover every offseason, that’s just the reality of any sport with free agency, and especially one with a salary cap. And when a team wins a Super Bowl, as the Seahawks did in February, said team’s free agency tend to be in even higher demand, making it all the more difficult to retain them.
So while the goal was to, as Schneider put it, run it back, Schneider also knew there would be at least some changes.
“Obviously, want to have everybody back,” Scheider said at the combine. “When you get done with something special like that, you’re like, ‘Yeah let’s run it back, let’s run it back.’ You know, it’s going to be an interesting process.”
Sure enough, there were some departures in free agency, five of them to be exact, but while those players will be missed, losing only five players in free agency will give the Seahawks a pretty unusual level of continuity for a team coming off a Super Bowl title.
The Seahawks lost two players who started Super Bowl LX, running back and Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker III (Chiefs) and safety Coby Bryant (Bears), two more players who had significant roles on defense, cornerback Riq Woolen (Eagles) and Boye Mafe (Bengals), as well as special teams standout Dareke Young (Raiders). And again, those players will be missed, but to lose only five free agents while retaining four other unrestricted free agents, including receiver and return specialist Rashid Shaheed and starting cornerback Josh Jobe, as well as all seven restricted free agents, puts the Seahawks in a great position heading into the draft. The Seahawks also have not, as of yet at least, had to make any salary cap-related cuts thanks to the healthy salary cap situation that Schneider and vice president of football administration Joey Laine have built in recent years. On top of that, the Seahawks have been able to add to the roster by signing safety D’Anthony Bell, safety Noah Igbinoghene, safety Rodney Thomas II and running back Emanuel Wilson.
And most recently, of course, the Seahawks were able to sign All-Pro receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba to a big extension.
“We have talked about it before, obviously, we want to keep as many guys as we possibly can,” Schneider said at this week’s press conference to announce Smith-Njigba’s extension. “However you look at it, fortunately or unfortunately, (roster turnover) is just part of the business, it’s part of the job that we’ve all jumped into, and we’re going to miss the guys that have left. And we’re going to dive in even more into the guys that are still on our team. And we had planned for this. Joey Laine and our group upstairs, as you approach free agency, free agency meetings, what that looks like, getting through the combine, speaking to everybody down there, seeing what the landscape’s going to look like
“But obviously it’s draft and retain. This is a great example of drafting and developing and keeping it in-house. And that’s been our priority since we got here in 2010. So that hasn’t changed. But the strategy of it is trying to extend our guys as much as we possibly can. We have a cool mix of guys that are just kind of hitting like their first time in free agency and veterans that have been through free agency before. And it’s just a really cool mix of older and younger guys. It’s pretty neat.”