Seahawks Could Follow Familiar Formula to Another Successful Season

Albert Breer's mailbag covers Seattle’s sneaky potential, New England’s unusual quarterback situation, why an NFL draft lottery hasn’t been considered and more.

Tomorrow’s the day! And today’s the day for your mail …

From Mitch Beiter (@MitchBeiter91): Team you’re higher on than consensus for the foreseeable future?

Mitch, for me, it’s been Seattle the whole offseason. There are three big reasons why.

1) Last year’s rookies. Tackles Charles Cross and Abraham Lucas, corners Riq Woolen and Coby Bryant, tailback Kenneth Walker III and defensive end Boye Mafe all had significant roles, with Cross, Woolen and Lucas being starters from Day 1. The group accounted for 4,838 snaps played, which was 22.9% of all snaps for the team, a staggering total for a team that was in the playoffs—not rebuilding. All are important and ascending pieces to the puzzle.

2) This year’s rookies. Would you believe Seattle thinks the 2023 class is just as good? Both Devon Witherspoon and Jaxon Smith-Njigba (before he got nicked up) have come as advertised and are expect to start, Derick Hall is in the defensive end rotation, and both Zach Charbonnet and Kenny McIntosh (who also is a little banged up) should add to what Walker’s bringing out of the backfield. That’s four guys who’ll play, with Day 3 picks Mike Morris and Olu Oluwatimi showing potential, too.

3) I’m buying on Geno Smith. I don’t think last year was a fluke. Neither do the Seahawks, and their willingness to tie this year’s team’s success to him is evidence of it. To me, it’s pretty simple. He was seen as a raw prospect coming out in 2013, with traits and a lot of production in an Air Raid offense in college. He had to play early. Predictably, he stumbled. The people who drafted him were fired. The new guys got rid of him. And he developed as a backup for five years. And now, we’re seeing that the idea he could play wasn’t so far-fetched after all. Especially because, as it turns out, he’s the right kind of guy and worker (which is no small part of this).

Look, I’m not saying this is 2012 all over again. But if the formula then was to pair a couple of off-the-charts draft classes with a quarterback found in a nontraditional way, after taking extra swings (Matt Flynn then, Drew Lock now) at the position, well, then the Seahawks are blazing a familiar trail here. Which I think will put them in the playoffs again.

Woolen, right, is one of several Seahawks defenders on rookie contracts who could help Seattle exceed expectations again this season :: Gary A. Vasquez/USA TODAY Sports

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From JDins5 (@JDins_5): What are the chances we see Mac Jones replaced this year if he stays healthy? It’s been a weird situation behind him, in true Belichick fashion. But with three young options behind him and an offense expected to lack dynamic pass plays, feels shaky.

J-Dins, on one hand, I’d say that the Patriots' on-field actions have shown a hitching of the wagon squarely to No. 10. Bill O’Brien has built an offense that highlights Jones’s strengths, and those two spent endless hours together in the offseason. (To be fair, Bailey Zappe was there for that, too). The Patriots have fed the great majority of first-team reps to Jones. Even Bill Belichick, over the past few days, has started building Jones up publicly.

On the other hand, there is the way they’ve handled what’s behind Jones on the depth chart. They drafted Bailey Zappe in the fourth round last year, and signed Malik Cunningham, an at least notable college quarterback, as an undrafted free agent. They jettisoned Brian Hoyer. And after cleaning out the quarterback room at the cutdown, they put Panthers castoff Matt Corral, a 2022 third-rounder, on the 53-man roster.

Corral, Zappe and Cunningham, to be sure, qualify far more as swings at finding a young quarterback than they do providing Jones with any sort of resource. That would tell you on the surface that, at the very least, they’re hedging their bet on Jones. Now, in digging a little bit, I did find that they at least put feelers out on Colt McCoy and Case Keenum (the Texans really value Keenum in how he can help C.J. Stroud). So it’s not like getting Jones another sounding board wasn’t considered—it was more that the right one wasn’t out there.

That said, I don’t think Jones is so entrenched to where if he really struggled, and Corral (who has very legitimate physical traits, way moreso than Zappe does) flashes in practice, there wouldn’t be some desire to see what Corral looks like in a game setting. And then after the year, the team will have a big decision to make on Jones, with the call on his fifth-year option due right after the draft. Declining the option, of course, would kick the door wide open to the team considering other options at the position.

But for now, I’d say there’s good optimism around Jones, based on the summer he had, his relationship with O’Brien and how the team has responded to him.

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The Colts will roll with Richardson as their starting quarterback against the Jaguars at 1 p.m. Sunday :: Bill Streicher/USA TODAY Sports

From relken (@ParsonsWrld): By what week will Anthony Richardson be inducted into the HOF.

Relken, I know this is a reference to the MMQB lead on Richardson.

So I’d say Week 5 or so … alright, seriously, though, I do think there’s a lot of reason for excitement that has little to do with predicting where he’ll be a decade from now. And that relates back to what we saw 11 years ago in the Superdome. Maybe people forget it now, but that year, Washington showed approximately nothing in the preseason with Robert Griffin III at quarterback, then unleashed an offense unlike any the NFL had seen before in Week 1 against the Saints. Forty points and 459 yards later, pro football had changed.

Gone was the idea that college concepts simply wouldn’t work in the NFL, and that Washington team had the rest of the league on the run the rest of the year.

In 2023, teams are far more prepared for those sorts of systems than they ever were before, but the element of surprise can still be, and often is, weaponized with uniquely talented quarterbacks coming out of college. And Richardson is as much that as any quarterback we’ve seen come out over the last decade, with his package of height, size, strength, speed, explosiveness, all of it.

That plays into the point I was trying to make in the story—It’s going to be exciting to see what the Colts, after an offseason of studying high school and college schemes, roll out with Richardson taking the snaps against the Jaguars at 1 p.m. Eastern on Sunday. I’d think everyone would be curious to see how it plays out? Or, I guess, maybe not.

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From txl (@txllel): Are the Panthers and Brian Burns really not close on a contract and how much does he end up getting?

Txl, I’m not sure there’s been a ton of progress there, which is why you’d get the hold-in now. At this point, it makes sense for Burns to wait to see what happens with Nick Bosa, and then negotiate thereafter. The Panthers have made offers. Burns knows what they turned down in a trade proposal from the Rams last year (two first-rounders and a third-rounder). So, logically, there’s disagreement on his value.

Do I think if Bosa gets $32 million per year that Burns will, too? No, I don’t. But I do think it’ll be easier for him to get what J.J. Watt got ($28 million per) in that circumstance. And my sense here would be that, however you see Burns individually, his hold-in (I’m guessing he’ll play Sunday, regardless of whether he practices at all this week) would be designed to show the Panthers, in a practice setting, just what life without Burns would look like.

Could all that move the needle in negotiations? Maybe. Maybe not. As I see it, neither side has shown its cards enough to know if there’s a deal to be done here in the short-term.

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From Stampede (@VikingsStampede): How likely are we to see the Justin Jefferson extension be announced this week?

Stampede, this is legit 50–50. Justin Jefferson doesn’t do a deal if it doesn’t make him the highest-paid receiver in league history. The question is how you measure the highest-paid players. On paper, Tyreek Hill got $30 million per in new money in Miami, and Davante Adams got $28 million per in new money in Las Vegas. But Hill has $45 million due in 2026, the final year of his deal, and Davante Adams is due $72.5 million in the last two years of his deal. In both cases, those balloon payments happen after the guy in question turns 32.

Take those big back-end numbers out, and Hill is getting $23.9 million per over four years, and Adams is getting $22.6 million over three years—still really good money, but not exactly what it was advertised to be, especially when there’s not much chance they’ll ever see the money that’s sitting on the end of those contracts. Similarly, A.J. Brown has a year at $31 million (which he actually might get) at the end of his four-year, $100 million extension.

The point is there’s really not the clearest market out there for a player like Jefferson, who’s certainly the type of player who’s worth resetting the market for. That doesn’t mean, of course, that the Vikings and Jefferson can’t find a middle ground. It just makes it a challenge to get there, especially when there’s two years left on his rookie deal.

Of course, it’d benefit the Vikings and Jefferson to do it now. So they’ll keep swinging, even if having the ability to wait could prevent something from getting done this week.

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From Mike (@Boston__Sucks): All the talk about the Cardinals tanking has me wondering if there's ever any chance the NFL would implement a draft lottery?

Mike, first of all, Boston does not suck. Second, it’s something that never has gotten great consideration, and it’s because owners don’t believe tanking is the issue in football that it is in basketball, and that a lottery could do more damage than good.

Why? Well, first of all, it’s rare that there is a player whom football folks are so sure about that he’s worth tanking for. And in the cases where there is, and there is a lottery, it could make tanking more wide-spread, in that teams might want to fall from the 10th-worst team to, say, the sixth-worst team to have a better shot at the first pick. Which is to say adding a lottery might be cutting off your nose to spite your face.

This year, like you said, Mike, should provide us all with an interesting test case, in that there should be at least two quarterbacks (USC’s Caleb Williams and North Carolina’s Drake Maye) worthy of a top-two pick. Will it cause failing teams to aggressively sell off parts as the trade deadline approaches? Will it lead to creative roster management down the stretch?

I actually think it could, particularly with owners listening to their analytics folks more than ever before.

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From 49ers_LFG_ (@pmtNinerfan84): Why are the 49ers quibbling over $2 million in additional salary per year for Bosa? Do they really think there are long term ramifications if they meet his demands?

LFG, if I had to guess, I’d bet it’s not just the raw dollars. I’d think it’s also the guarantees, the cashflow, the bonus structure/timing—all the stuff that’s important to an agent (for recruiting), a player (in how it can force a team to stick to its word and/or make early decisions on a guy’s future) and a team (because of precedents these things set with other players).

Now, both the 49ers and Bosa’s side have been disciplined about keeping the details of talks quiet, much moreso than in some other high-profile negotiations going on. So it’s hard to tell exactly what the problem is. But I’d bet there’s plenty of agreement here too, mostly because there really isn’t much argument over how good Bosa is.

And that’s why I think smart people on both sides get this done Friday or Saturday.

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From Chilly Willy (@kc571v): Does the money transcend missing the ring ceremony, banner raising, and leading the team, for the defending champs and Chris Jones?

Willy, don’t do that. Because, really, all you’re saying is that the player should value being there more than the team should value having him there. I understand why fans play that game. But anyone should understand why a guy is trying to get his worth while he’s still got the leverage to get it. No one should blame Jones for doing that.

Jonathan Taylor’s uncomfortable saga with the Colts has the potential to drag on through the Oct. 31 trade deadline :: Stephen R. Sylvanie/USA TODAY Sports

From The O.F. (@theTodd1806): What is going to happen to JT? I drafted him in the last round because he was available. What can I realistically expect from him this year?

I’d say if you’re a Jonathan Taylor fantasy owner, there’s a sequence of events to root for. It’d start with the Colts playing well enough without Jonathan Taylor to show their quarterback will be O.K. without him. Then, it’d be Taylor coming in the first week of October onto a moving train, and playing great against the Titans, Colts, Browns and Saints. Then, you’d either have a team in position to keep and feature him, or trade him to a contender.

And optimally, you’d get him traded at that point, where you could get the sort of bump in production that Christian McCaffrey got upon landing in San Francisco.

So, yes, there’s a path to him being a major difference-maker for you. Good flyer to take.

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From The Booth Review (@DragSwagcast): Do you still expect Jonathan Taylor to be traded this year? And if so who is most likely?

Maybe, and I love the idea of Miami. I think Mike McDaniel might, too, just because of how last year went.

That offense, of course, has decades of history in turning everyone short of you and I into a 1,000-yard rusher. And that really held for McDaniel and Kyle Shanahan in San Francisco, with four different leading rushers in the four years the two worked together there. Then, last year happened, and McCaffrey displayed what a truly elite back can do in their vaunted run game.

And so I could certainly see where McDaniel would look over to his old place, and say, I want some of THAT. In fact, to some degree, he already has, and it’d make sense to revisit the feeling if the team is rolling into Halloween.

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From Brian Murphy (@bmurph13): Who is the next OC/DC that takes the league by storm in the coming years? A la Sean McVay, DeMeco Ryans, etc.

This would be a good place to tease the great work our own Conor Orr does on this very subject—his list is coming out a little later in the month, so be on the lookout for it.

But if you’re asking me for some top names, among offensive coordinators, I’d give you Detroit’s Ben Johnson, Cincinnati’s Brian Callahan, Buffalo’s Ken Dorsey, Chicago’s Luke Getsy, the Giants’ Mike Kafka and Philadelphia’s Brian Johnson as guys who’ll be on head-coach lists next January.

The defensive coordinator list is actually longer, because they don’t get picked off as quickly. So I’d give you New England’s de facto DC Jerod Mayo, Detroit’s Aaron Glenn, Dallas’s Dan Quinn, Carolina’s Ejiro Evero, Cincinnati’s Lou Anarumo, Minnesota’s Brian Flores, the Giants’ Wink Martindale, Denver’s Vance Joseph and San Francisco’s Steve Wilks as names worth keeping an eye on.

And of course if the Commanders break through this year under new ownership and survive the transition (not an easy trick turn), Eric Bieniemy could get hot again.

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From CA&Dre (@CAandDre): When can Monday Night Football games be flexed?

Games can be flexed to Monday from Sunday, and vice versa, starting with the Week 13 slate, and changes must be done at least 12 days in advance. Which means the first time you’d see a change announced would be sometime in mid-November.