The Seattle Seahawks are spending $41.5m on receivers this season.
That’s 16.5% of their entire cap space. No other position on the team is carrying a higher percentage.
Here’s the top-five:
Wide receiver — 16.5%
D-line — 14.6%
Quarterback — 10.9%
Linebacker — 10.6%
Secondary — 10%
In comparison, the offensive line is only taking up 8.8% of the cap.
These numbers will obviously change in time. If Charles Cross receives a contract extension in the next 18 months, that O-line number will go up dramatically.
Yet the fact receiver is currently the most expensive position on the team speaks to Seattle’s identity crisis.
For a long time now they’ve seemingly been intending to build a physical football team. John Schneider once talked about becoming the bullies again, following the LOB era. Schneider was mentored by Ron Wolf — a GM whose main philosophy was to commit to the trenches.
When Schneider and Pete Carroll took over the intention was to try and emulate Pittsburgh and Baltimore — at the time the two most physically imposing teams in the NFL.
I don’t think anything changed switching from Carroll to Mike Macdonald. He’s from Baltimore. He knows the emphasis they place on toughness.
Macdonald has spoken about the running game being integral to the identity of the team and the philosophy. Ryan Grubb says the same. The Seahawks didn’t appoint the defensive coordinator from the Baltimore Ravens to run a finesse football team.
Yet despite having ambitions to be tough, physical and built in the image of the AFC North, the Seahawks continue to appear finesse.
The offensive line being as bad as it is isn’t helping. Here’s the thing though — PFF has the Seahawks as the sixth worst pass blocking team in the league. Their run blocking grade is 16th — right in the middle. Based on that small sample, they’d be better off running the ball more. Yet they’ve had more than one half or full game this year where the run has been a total afterthought.
I think this is partly due to the construction of the team. When you pay D.K. Metcalf and Tyler Lockett a combined cap hit of $33.9m, then throw in the 20th overall pick into the mix, there’s a pressure for that investment to pay off. Not only that, there’s everything that comes with not feeding your receivers. The media will point out when players aren’t getting targets. Receivers, more than any other position, are conscious about how they’re being used.
In the meantime, so much investment at this position instead of the offensive line is also directly impacting your ability to function as a passing offense, because the line is playing so badly.
The end result is a very expensive arsenal of weapons, featuring within a streaky offense. Meanwhile, the O-line features two cheap struggling guards, a third-stringer at right tackle and a center coming off a serious injury that they clearly felt they had no choice but to take a chance on.
Team-building isn’t straight forward and there’s nothing ideal about it. If you or I, god forbid, took over the running of a team tomorrow — you wouldn’t be able to just say ‘we’re taking linemen early and often’. Would you turn down a great player with a far higher grade at a different position, to force-pick a guard instead, purely on a point of principal? Of course not.
There isn’t an offensive lineman who would’ve been noticeably better than Devon Witherspoon or Jaxon Smith-Njigba in round one last year. The year prior, they did take an offensive lineman with the #9 pick.
This is something to consider when criticising the team. It’s not always as simple as committing to a position group in the draft. You are beholden to what’s available when you pick.
However, there have been some odd decisions recently. Why pay Noah Fant — effectively more of a pass-catching threat than a blocking tight end — if you don’t intend to feature a dynamic pass-catcher at the position? Why did they pass on a cluster of reasonable center prospects that have been available beyond round one over the years, instead choosing to have a different starter virtually every season? Why be aggressive in a trade for a box safety but not as aggressive in the free agent market for offensive linemen — especially given the annual problems with the unit?
It’s not even really about what’s happened in the past. The most important thing is what happens next. Are they going to do anything differently?
For example, they face a decision in the off-season over Metcalf. The top receivers are signing new contracts worth between $30-35m a year at the moment. Can you seriously make that level of investment in him?
They have to do something because his cap hit in 2025 is $31.8m. They basically have to pay him or trade him. So what do you do? Can you legitimately build an identity based around quality and physicality in the trenches, while also paying so much at receiver?
When Joe Hortiz and Jim Harbaugh took over the Chargers, they made it clear what they were going to do. They let Mike Williams walk and traded away Keenan Allen. They prioritised keeping Joey Bosa and Khalil Mack instead. They then drafted a right tackle with a top-five pick and were happy to add a cheap receiver in round two.
The plan to turn LA into another Harbaugh machine is very much underway and isn’t going to be knocked off course. Whether they succeed or not, I bet by 2025 the Chargers will look like Michigan and the 49ers under Harbaugh. They will be the opposite of finesse.
Are the Seahawks willing to do the same? Are they prepared to make some difficult decisions and shift investment into the offensive line and prioritise that area? Will they speculate to accumulate up front in a way they’ve been hesitant to do so — with the GM even admitting in a now infamous statement that interior linemen are often ‘over-drafted and over-paid’?
Part of me wonders if that was a smokescreen, given it emerged they had their eye on JC Latham in the draft (a player who could’ve easily ended up at guard, at least this year, having already signed George Fant to play right tackle in Abe Lucas’ absence). Regardless, they’re going to have to do more this off-season to rectify the major problem area they face.
Maybe there’s a way to keep Metcalf and still fix the O-line? Possibly. They’re tight against the cap though. What are the other solutions?
I don’t think it’s beyond the realms of possibility there’s a shift to a cheaper quarterback. It’s hardly the most outrageous suggestion that Schneider isn’t the biggest backer of Geno Smith. Lest we forget the ‘he’s the starter until he isn’t’ comment from a few months ago. Dre’Mont Jones might be playing his way into a painful financial divorce for the team. How much longer will Tyler Locket play on for? You can’t justify another year of Noah Fant in his current role (I’d trade him now if possible — it’d be best for both parties).
You can do a lot with $30m. You can do even more with $30m and a decent draft pick or two. These are things you have to consider. What is the best way to establish your identity and create a winner? Is it extending Metcalf or investing elsewhere?
It’s not just the O-line that needs work either. Clearly the defense is still badly lacking in certain areas too.
It’s why I think plodding along isn’t really a solution. The team in more or less its current form has shown it can be an eight or nine win outfit under Carroll and it’s trending that way again at 3-3 under Macdonald. You can do that every year if you want, or you can try and change things.
My feeling is if you want to be a trenches team built in the image of the old Pittsburgh and Baltimore outfits, do it. If like Harbaugh in LA you want to be built to win up front, shape your roster that way.
There’s nothing worse than intending to do something and then positioning yourself to do the opposite. At times the Seahawks appear to have a really muddled identity and I think this is the main reason why. They want to make a pumpkin pie and they’ve bought the ingredients for a chocolate cake.
If they turn around in the off-season and say, ‘right — it’s time to sort these lines out once and for all’ and commit to doing it, however painful that might be at other positions, I’m all for it.
I don’t see the Seahawks ever lifting a Lombardi Trophy in their current design. I can’t imagine a Smith-to-Metcalf Super Bowl winning touchdown moment. I think if they’re ever going to contend they’re going to need three key ingredients:
1. A really good O-line
2. At least one game-wrecking defender
3. A quarterback capable of winning the lot
It might be time to accept that currently, they have some good players. They have some players — Ken Walker for example — who could be great. But they don’t necessarily have sufficient quality in the areas they need to create their preferred identity, or win big in the NFL.
Changing things can take time. So why wait any longer than you have to?
