Heaps: Cliff Avril is right, Seahawks lack an identity and that has to change

Two Seahawks legends recently appeared on a podcast for Pro Football Focus, and let’s just say they didn’t hold back.

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The Richard Sherman Podcast, is, naturally, hosted by former All-Pro Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman. His guest during the latest installment was former Hawks Pro Bowl pass rusher Cliff Avril.

Sherman’s comments regarding his thoughts on Seahawks fans and their expectations, as well as what he thinks about calls to fire head coach Pete Carroll, stole the show, but Avril had a pretty notable take regarding the direction of the team.

Avril was asked by Sherman what he thought a “perfect offseason” looked like for the Seahawks in order for the team to return to where they typically have been in January over the last decade-plus, which is in the playoffs.

Before talking about adding players at certain spots on defense, Avril pointed to the team’s identity, which he doesn’t believe is there.

“You’ve got to find your identity. What is your identity going to be?” Avril said. “When we were playing lights out, we knew what the game plan was every week. There wasn’t no question and it wasn’t changing every week, right? We were going to play our same coverage, we were going to play our same front on defense and the team was going to rely on us to shut things down … That was just our identity. I’m not necessarily saying they need to get back to that, but they need to figure out what it’s going to be.”

On Tuesday, former NFL quarterback Jake Heaps listened to Avril’s comments during 710 ESPN Seattle’s Jake and Stacy and made it clear that he thinks Avril is absolutely correct.

“Cliff Avril (said) something that we’ve pointed to, looking at the identity of the team and recognizing that there’s no identity to be had,” Heaps said. “What does this team want to be? Who are they? Well, how do you build your roster? How do you build your team to reflect that identity? That has not been clear in this four-year period since they have moved on from the Legion of Boom and since Richard Sherman and Cliff Avril have been members of that organization.”

Heaps said the Seahawks this offseason need to define what their identity is and make it very clear in order to help dictate the moves that they make.

“It’s not just what they say or what they say they want to be, it’s how you put it into practice and how you go about drafting, how you go about your free-agent acquisitions, and really (making it clear) where your priorities are,” Heaps said. “And still as you go into this offseason and you look at some of the names and some of the people that they’re trying to re-sign and all that, does it really, truly fit the priority or the philosophy of who you want to ultimately be? And that, I think, is the conundrum that the Seahawks find themselves in right now and something that they have to fix as soon as possible.”

Listen to the full second hour of Jake and Stacy at this link or in the player below.

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