NFL Trade Rumors: Did The Seattle Seahawks Mess Up By Not Making Any Trades?

At the onset of the 2014 NFL season, most would have predicted the Seattle Seahawks to stand pat at the trade deadline. They were young, awesome, and more or less complete. The question was less what would be the team’s needs in late October, it was whether or not they’d lose a single game all year. Three losses, countless injuries, and one less Percy Havin later, the Hawks approached the deadline as a team in turmoil, looking for a boost in any way possible. Funny thing about sports is that you really just can’t predict what’s going to happen until it happens.

Seattle’s position at the deadline should have been clear – buyers. A team trying to win right now with obvious holes on the roster should be looking to load up on firepower, right? Instead there were persistent rumors that Marshawn Lynch was on the trading block, followed by denials of these rumors, followed by the team doing nothing. Oooooo-kay, then!

Not that the Seahawks made literally no moves – they waived receiver Phil Bates and tight end Brett Brackett. Bates had been signed off the practice squad a week ago, whereas Brackett had just arrived as a waiver claim. These are procedural things, and the team’s hope is almost certainly that they can sneak both of them through waivers and back onto the practice squad. Those were the only two moves the Seahawks made at the deadline, and they’re hardly moves at all.

This bears the big question – did the Seahawks mess up? Where’s that difference maker at wide receiver that the team clearly could use? Why didn’t Seattle bring in any help for the battered defensive ranks? Depth is becoming an issue right now because of injuries. Shouldn’t the Hawks have pursued some depth in order to help them the rest of the way?

It’s easy to suggest that John Schneider and company didn’t do enough to make the Seahawks a better team when given the opportunity. But that’s ignoring the fact that we have no idea what kind of phone calls were going on behind the scenes. It’s easy, as fans, to be frustrated that there weren’t any trades. The hard part is accepting that for all we know, this was the right thing to do.

Because we don’t know anything about what went on behind the scenes, we can’t say that there was even a deal to be made. Schneider stood pat, but odds are he looked hard at a lot of different options. Why would we think otherwise? A trade, of course, requires two sides to complete. It’s not often that the needs of two franchises align enough to facilitate a deal.

Where there’s no fit, there’s no deal. Perhaps prices were just too high on the kind of assets the Seahawks were looking to acquire. Perhaps there wasn’t anyone out there who represented enough of an upgrade over what the Seahawks have internally. Nobody knows more about the health of the Hawks players than the Hawks management. Maybe some important pieces are closer to returning at full strength than any of us know now. The sideline is a bad place from which to speculate.

Did the Seahawks screw up by not making a big splash at the dealine? Who knows. Is there a chance that management whiffed on the chance to do something huge? Sure. But the safe bet is that the Seahawks sniffed around and found that what was out there wasn’t to their liking, at least not to the extent of being right for the team. This front office has quite the track record of good decision-making. They get the benefit of the doubt here.