Door May Already Be Closing on B.J. Finney's Future with Seahawks

When the Seahawks signed Finney in March, the fifth-year veteran was expected to take over as a replacement for Justin Britt. But through three weeks of camp, he's struggled mightily and Britt's potential return has his future with the organization in doubt.

With a little under three weeks to go until the Seahawks square off against the Falcons to begin the 2020 NFL regular season, uncertainty remains as to who Russell Wilson will be taking snaps from. Seattle saved a decent amount of cap space by releasing multi-year starting center Justin Britt in late April months after he suffered a torn ACL and brought in veteran B.J. Finney, who started in four games for the Steelers in 2019, on a two-year, $8 million contract. 

Because of the decently sized cap hit and Finney's moderate success as a spot starter in Pittsburgh, the 29-year old looked poised to take over as Seattle's new starter at the pivot position. But ever since training camp began, reports have alluded to the contrary, saying that fourth year lineman Ethan Pocic has been getting the brunt of the workload with the Seahawks' first team offense.

Pocic hasn't had much of an opportunity to compete at his natural position of center, being behind Britt for the duration of his time with the Seahawks up to this point. When Britt went down last season, he was on the injured reserved himself and didn't see much game action when he returned before going back on IR a few weeks later.

Now it seems that Pocic is running away with the job, or at least has performed well enough to edge Finney out thus far. Add in the fact that, following the suspension of center Kyle Fuller (which, at the time, appeared to be good news for Finney), Britt paid an official visit to the Seahawks on Wednesday with hopes of returning to the team, and suddenly things aren't looking too good for Finney's chances of breaking camp on Seattle's roster. 

Cutting Finney doesn't help the Seahawks in 2020 beyond freeing up the roster spot, however. The team would have to eat the entirety of his $3.5 million salary cap hit and another $1 million dead cap hit in 2021.

It's a tough pill to swallow for a team that's strapped for cap space and could use every cent they can get to address several other needs along their roster, especially when more money could potentially be poured in bringing back Britt, a player they cut just four months ago in favor of Finney.

But it's better to recognize the flaw in their decision to sign Finney now rather than have it impact them in the future when real games begin to be played. Center is such a critical position to the success of the whole offensive operation and it's a legitimate problem that there's no real answer at the spot right now for a Super Bowl contending team just 18 days before the start of the season.