Seahawks will soon ‘see a lot of new faces’ says NFL’s Mike Silver
Dec 23, 2017, 2:42 PM | Updated: 10:24 pm
The future may be uncertain for several highly paid Seahawks players (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
(AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
“It was a miserable Sunday for the 69,077 fans at CenturyLink,” wrote NFL Network’s Mike Silver after the Seahawks lost 42-7 to the Rams last week.
“Usually when I come up there really crazy things happen or the Seahawks just look awesome, so it was a new one for me,” Silver told 710 ESPN Seattle’s Brock and Salk. “The Rams obviously have been kind of pushing their way into the upper echelon this year under Sean McVay. I just kind of assumed the Seahawks would do the ‘heart of a champion’ thing and make it a great battle.”
But battle the Seahawks did not.
“Injuries have taken a toll, but that whole end-of-an-era thing is kind of looming and that sucks,” Silver said.
One problem he cited is the salary cap. Teams can often find creative ways to work around the cap, but Seattle has paid a lot of players a lot of money.
“Conventional wisdom would not have suggested that they could give big contracts to as many players as they were able to. By and large those have been the right decisions,” Silver said. “Unfortunately, with the defense being the strength of that team, with age and injury becoming part of the equation and the cap being an issue, I think all of that kind of coalesced.”
The Seahawks still have great players to build around like Russell Wilson and Bobby Wagner. But the rest of the team needs to get younger fast.
“If it goes the way I think it’s going to go, I think you’re going to see a lot of new faces,” Silver said. “Those new faces better be pretty good. Because the Earl Thomases and the Michael Bennetts, the Chancellors, the Avrils, the Richard Shermans, they’ve been special. And not just as players, but as competitors and as a cohesive unit that kind of does things a certain way.”
There is reason to believe the Seahawks will be able to find talent in future drafts just as they have in the past. Seattle picked both Richard Sherman and Kam Chancellor in the fifth round. Russell Wilson was taken in the third.
“It doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to do that by snapping your fingers, but I think there’s some faith that they can,” Silver said. “On the other hand, I’ve only seen one Earl Thomas, and I’ve been covering football for 30 years. Not that I haven’t seen great safeties, but I’ve only seen one who does it the way he does it.”
