By Gregg Bell
The News Tribune
Russell Wilson’s frustrations with the Seahawks just became even more well-founded.
The NFC West-rival Arizona Cardinals are signing five-time All-Pro defensive end J.J. Watt to a two-year contract. That will be another issue for the Seahawks’ pass protection of Wilson this year.
Watt, who turns 32 next month, announced his deal with the Cardinals on his Twitter social-media account Monday morning. He ended weeks of speculation of where he would sign as a free agent after he and his former Houston Texans parted.
Watt gets $23 million guaranteed, ESPN reported.
Injuries have kept him from playing a full season in three of the last five years. But with 101 sacks in 10 seasons, he paired on the opposite end with pass-rush linebacker Chandler Jones is a problem for Cardinals.
Pass protection has been a problem for Seattle, for years.
Jones knows that as well as anyone. He posted on Twitter after Watt chose to sign with the Cardinals: “Also feel bad for my guy RW3 lol”
Wilson, 32 said during a conference call with Seattle-area reporters last month that “I am frustrated with getting hit too much.” That was after he was again among the NFL’s most-sacked quarterbacks this past season, despite a team-record 40 touchdown passes.
The Los Angeles Rams have NFL defensive player of the year Aaron Donald and the league’s top-ranked defense. They have sacked Wilson more than any other team in the league over the QB’s 10-year career, 72 times in 18 regular-season games.
The team that’s sacked Wilson the second-most times? The Cardinals (59, in 18 games). Now they have Watt paired with Jones. Jones’ 13 1/2 sacks of Wilson in nine career games are more than twice more than he’s had against any other team.
Also in the NFC West: San Francisco, with a top-five defensive front featuring Nick Bosa and Arik Armstead and Dee Ford, when healthy. Even with an injured team in 2020 that failed to make the playoffs a year after playing in the Super Bowl, the 49ers (missing both Bosa and Ford) sacked Wilson four times in two games last season.
The Seahawks are likely to have two new starters among their first five offensive linemen in 2021. But they currently have scant resources to get top-flight ones.
Hence Wilson’s ongoing frustration.
Former All-Pro left guard Mike Iupati is retiring from the NFL at the age of 33 after 11 seasons with the San Francisco 49ers, Arizona Cardinals and, in 2019 and 2020, Seattle. He told his agent as soon as the Seahawks’ season ended with their home playoff loss to the Rams last month that he was leaving the game following a chronic nerve issue in his neck that sidelined him late in each of his two seasons with Seattle, the Spokesman-Review reported last week.
The Seahawks have a cheaper, in-house replacement in Jordan Simmons. He has performed well in spot starts at left, and more often, right guard as an injury replacement on the offensive line the last few seasons.
Seattle drafted Phil Haynes in the fourth round in 2019 to potentially start at left guard. He’s been injured for most of his first two NFL seasons and played in just two games in two years.
Wilson declaring his frustration at succumbing to a league-high 394 sacks in nine years and essentially demanding better pass protection could precede 40% of his offensive line changing for 2021. That’s because center Ethan Pocic’s contract ended with that playoff loss to the Rams in early January.
While the football world went bonkers Thursday over agent Mark Rodgers creating a trade market for Wilson that doesn’t exist and the quarterback hasn’t asked for, Green Bay Packers All-Pro center Corey Linsley was telling Sirius XM radio “looks like all signs are pointing towards snapping the ball somewhere else next year.”
Including Linsley, Seattle could have an unusually large market of veteran starters available across the league from which to choose as free agents to replace Iupati and Pocic when the market opens with the new league year March 17. The league’s salary cap is dropping from $198.2 million last year to no lower than $180 million this year. That is going to result in teams cutting many veterans who have what are middle-class salaries in the NFL, in the range of $3-8 million per season, to get under the lower cap limit.
The challenge for the Seahawks is, this may not be the offseason to change their approach and buy expensive, All-Pro offensive linemen.
Assuming a cap of $180 million (it could end up closer to $185 million), Seattle has just $4.9 million of space, according to overthecap.com. That is the second-lowest total in the league among teams that aren’t over the new cap for 2021.
The Seahawks are likely to join the many teams cutting veterans or restructuring expensive contracts to save cap space. The prime candidates for converting base salary to bonus money for a more team-friendly cap number: Wilson ($32 million cap charge for 2021), Bobby Wagner ($17.15 million) and Tyler Lockett ($14,950,000).
Seattle’s fourth- and fifth-highest cap charges on the team are for defensive linemen Carlos Dunlap ($14.04 million) and Jarran Reed ($13,975,000). Both were key to the team’s resurgent pass rush over the latter half of the 2020 season.
They are entering the final years of their contracts. A restructure with them to save cap space would more likely be new contract extensions beyond 2021, with bonus money up front and lower, more-team-cap-friendly base salaries this year.
