You’ve heard the story a million times already. The Seattle Seahawks had a lot of salary cap space and proceeded to sign one offensive lineman, Josh Jones, who’s otherwise spent the past two years as a backup.
Seattle brought in several veteran linemen for visits, including Teven Jenkins, Lucas Patrick, and Dillon Radunz. All of them left without contracts and have since signed with other teams.
So what’s the plan for the Seahawks? You should probably expect the Seahawks to lean on their recent and future draft picks.
At the NFL’s annual league meeting, Schneider made it clear to reporters that adding a veteran offensive lineman in the coming weeks is unlikely.
“It probably won’t be until after the draft that’s a cap casualty guy or something like that,” Schneider said (via Seahawks.com). “We brought several guys through, it just hasn’t been a fit.”
If that isn’t a clear indicator of how the Seahawks felt about the FA market as a whole outside of Will Fries, I don’t know what is.
The Seahawks, of course, do have recent draft picks on the roster who are still developing. Center Olu Oluwatimi and guard Anthony Bradford are entering their third seasons, Christian Haynes and Sautoa Laumea are in their second seasons, while the undrafted Jalen Sundell looked like a potential gem of an addition in his rookie campaign. With (another) new coaching staff on the offensive line and at offensive coordinator, Schneider alluded to how OL coach John Benton and others on staff view Seattle’s younger talent.
“I know everybody’s like, ‘You need offensive linemen,’’ Schneider said. “Yeah, we do want to add to our offensive line—but it’s cool to have those guys come in from the outside and be like, ‘Shoot, I loved Christian coming out, I loved Taoa.’ They like the guys.”
“You guys haven’t really seen Jalen yet,” he added. “He came in and they played really well. He played several positions. The staff really likes him. He’s smart, reliable, he’s tough. That’s going to be interesting. Those two guys, that’s going to be pretty interesting there.”
If you’ve made it this far, the clear approach is to draft and develop. The Seahawks have solidified their starting tackle spots with Charles Cross and a (hopefully healthy) Abe Lucas, it’s all a matter of how they approach the interior OL. Between the picks (and Sundell) and the future picks made in next month’s draft, this will be the future of Seattle’s offensive line. It’s just a matter of finally making it work.
