K.J. Wright: Why Jackson is most likely Seahawks DB to get traded

Wednesday marked the return of The K.J. Wright Show on Seattle Sports, and the former Seattle Seahawks linebacker had plenty to say about his former team as we inch closer to the start of the regular season.

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Something Wright brought up to Brock Huard and Mike Salk was a potential trade he could see happening as we get closer to roster cutdowns.

“I was asking you, I said ‘what is the bold/biggest move that (Seahawks general manager) John Schneider is going to make when it comes closer to cut time between now and the beginning of the season?'” Wright said to Salk.

Wright pointed to the Seahawks’ defense.

“He has an overcrowded DB room. He has no depth when it comes to the interior defensive line. Someone has to go,” Wright said. Unfortunately, everyone can’t stay. There’s going to be too many really good football players on the bench in the DB room. I just got done talking about Coby Bryant. Coby Bryant has to be on this football field this 2023 season. If he’s on the bench and just running down on kickoffs, running down on punts, that will not be a good look. So who is going to be the guy that is going to leave when it comes down to cut time?”

Huard, a former NFL quarterback, said if it’s just about trading a defensive back, Tre Brown would come to mind. But in terms of getting the most value in return, he pointed to another player.

“If you’re going to make a bold move, you’ve got to give up something of value to bring value back,” Huard said. “Mike Jackson is a starter in this league. He started every game last year and played very, very well. If you’re going to bring back a difference-maker in your depth on your defensive line, to me, I think he’d be the name that you’d have to consider.”

Jackson started for the Seahawks last year and all reports coming out of Seahawks camp is he’s been a top offseason performer.

Wright agrees with Huard that Jackson is a potential trade chip.

“When you look at Mike Jack, he played well last year, was a guy that surprised a lot of people,” Wright said. “But when you look at Mike Jack, he didn’t get drafted here. He’s not one of ‘those guys’ that John Schneider and Pete Carroll invested in. They invested in Tre Brown, they invested in Witherspoon, they invested in Coby Bryant. Like ‘These are our guys that we drafted. These are guys that we pay. These are the guys that we are going to put on this football field and take this new era (to the next level).'”

The Seahawks secondary is full of guys the Seahawks drafted or spent considerable capital on such as Jamal Adams, Quandre Diggs and Julian Love. Jackson, meanwhile, initially came to Seattle as a practice squad signee.

Salk asked Wright if that sort of thing actually matters.

“One million percent. If I scouted this guy, spent countless hours evaluating him, I traveled to see him, I interviewed him, I drafted him, I made that phone call to this guy, oh, that absolutely matters,” Wright said.

Huard agreed that that matters to a degree, but that he thinks the Seahawks are an organization that will move on from either a mistake or player a better player even if they come from the outside.

“I’ve seen the horrific fighting between coach and management and staff and it gets really ugly right. ‘No, this was my guy. I spotted him out in the scouting department, I saw him, you’re gonna keep him on the team,’ and the coaches are like, ‘Hey man, he’s not my guy. This is my guy.’ And I don’t feel that rift here,” he said.

Here’s what Wright had to say to that.

“When it comes down to that decision, you’re gonna go with your heart, you’re gonna go with your gut and you’re gonna go with the guy that you evaluated, you’re gonna go with the guy that you scouted,” he said. “And so when I look at Mike Jack, he is valuable. He’s doing everything right where when or if he does get traded, he’s going to be a starter somewhere else, he’s going to be a guy that’s going to get a nice, beautiful contract. So I can’t wait to see what happens when it comes down to this 53-man roster.”

Listen to the full K.J. Wright Show at this link or in the player near the top of this story.

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