Seattle Seahawks Free Agency News: The Purge
By Rob Shumate
Credit: Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports
Well, it was bound to happen. It happens to all Super Bowl teams, so why would the Seattle Seahawks be any different? Here you have a talent-ladened Super Bowl team, a surprising (and substantial) increase in cap space and teams increasingly desperate to keep up with the top team by ransacking their lineup. So here we sit three days into free-agency and it is apparent that the Seahawks will appear substantially different from last year’s team.
Within 72 hours the Seahawks have lost several key cogs to the team’s success in 2013/2014. Although we love each and every cog in the Seahawks machinery, they can be replaced and upgraded. This has been the modus operandi of the Pete Carroll and John Schneider regime over the last three years. So we shouldn’t get nervous; we shouldn’t start wringing our hands and pacing back and forth in an attempt to create an outlet for our anxiety. We shouldn’t. We know that. We have been through this before. But common sense tells you that as a fan, you get anxious watching your team being systematically torn apart piece by piece while all the while other teams are bolstering their rosters at your expense.
So we bid adieu to Clinton McDonald, Breno Giacomini, Golden Tate, Red Bryant, Chris Maragos and O’Brien Schofield, Chris Clemons, all who have signed elsewhere. Lost to free-agency/cuts and still looking for a team are Sidney Rice, Brandon Browner and Walter Thurmond III. We shouldn’t expect any of these players to return because there will be teams desperate enough to pay more money than the Seahawks. Don’t mistake what I am saying. These players are good but the Seahawks have a budget and therefore will be outbid by other teams that have a higher spending margin. So we gracefully say “Thank you for your services gentlemen. Best of luck to you.”
We have been able to retain Tony McDaniel, Tarvaris Jackson, Michael Bennett, Anthony McCoy, Jeron Johnson and Lemuel Jeanpierre. We have signed Taylor Price, a free-agent WR out of Jacksonville (a small consolation for what we have provided Jacksonville so far this off-season). We have retained Doug Baldwin but have not re-signed him yet. It would be a crime to lose him, especially now with Golden Tate gone.
There are rumors that Jason Hatcher, Jared Allen and Jermichael Finley have received interest from the Seahawks. At this point it is hard to know what to make out of any of this. Maybe this is all just a smoke screen and secretly John Schneider is signing a 24-year-old Safeway night stocker to play right guard. The point is we just never know what Seattle is doing behind the scenes, but they are doing something. It definitely makes things more exciting, but also plays with our nerves. Rest assured Pete and John are scouring numbers, statistics, videos and films, to find that diamond in the rough or that undervalued player that no other team sees value in.
And you know what? The 12th man will cheer just as loud for the new players as we do for the veterans because that is just how much we love our team. Go Hawks!