Seahawks filled every need during offseason

Finally, just as a new football season really kicks into gear, the Seahawks can claim they have checked every item on their offseason to-do list.

The goal all along, since the frustrating end to the 2018 season in Dallas, had been to sign the two pillars of their organization, Russell Wilson and Bobby Wagner, to extensions, keeping not only links to the Super Bowl days, but also hope that maybe a return isn’t all that far away.

Those two, along with linebacker K.J. Wright – also signed to an extension this offseason – are the only three starters left from the team that so gloriously routed Denver on that February night in 2014 when the Seahawks looked like a budding dynasty (DeShawn Shead, a reserve defensive back on the 2013 team, was re-signed by Seattle on Saturday, making him the fourth player on the roster who played in the Super Bowl victory).

Now, after Wagner signed a three-year extension Friday, the team has both Wilson and Wagner under contract into the next decade – Wagner through the 2022 season, Wilson through 2023.

The Seahawks also re-signed coach Pete Carroll in December, keeping him through the 2021 season, meaning the team has locked in maybe the most powerful trio in Seattle sports history for at least three more years.

So what’s next on the Seahawks’ agenda?

That used to be an open-ended question, with all kinds of possible answers.

But after re-signing Wagner, there is really only one player left on the roster who at the moment doesn’t have a significant deal who, from a football standpoint, is imminently deserving of one – defensive tackle Jarran Reed.

Reed, a second-round choice in 2016, has one year left on his rookie deal and could potentially command a contract from $17 million a year to $20 million a year following his breakthrough 10½-sack season of 2018.

But as you probably heard, Reed was suspended by the NFL last week for the first six games of the 2019 season for his involvement in a domestic violence incident in 2017.

Some have wondered if that changes Seattle’s future thoughts regarding Reed. Carroll, though, said a pretty emphatic no this week, and there’s reason to believe him. For one, the team has known about the incident since April 2017, when it occurred, with Reed having played two full seasons since then.

So, if the suspension itself was new, the incident itself was not, and Seattle has two-plus years of evidence of how Reed has reacted to the situation since then, which Carroll characterized this week in glowing terms.

Still, the incident might impact Reed’s market value – especially with him getting to play only 10 games this season – and if anything maybe makes it easier for Seattle to re-sign him.

This feels like a situation Seattle can wait out knowing it can also use the franchise tag if it wants – Wagner was the only other player who would have been a consideration for that in 2020, but that’s obviously not an issue now.

Otherwise, there’s no one else on the roster who you look at and know, as of today, in a year or two going is to mandate a significant payday, the way it was obvious about Wilson, Wagner, Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas or Kam Chancellor a year or two into their careers.

And therein lies the Seahawks’ next great challenge – drafting, developing, and/or otherwise acquiring players who are going to turn into elite performers, deserving of second and, even third, contracts.

Some might argue Chris Carson already has shown that. And indeed, he’s as bright of a young prospect as any on the Seattle roster right now, coming off a 1,151-yard season as he enters the third year of his rookie contract. That means he is eligible for an extension following the 2019 season.

Two problems, for Carson, anyway, if not the Seahawks – he plays a position at which teams are increasingly reluctant to give big extensions; and the team already has another back in which it has invested significant draft resources in Rashaad Penny. The Seahawks would seem likely to let Carson play out his deal in 2020 and then assess where things are with Carson and Penny, who obviously is a year behind Carson in his rookie deal.

The rest of the roster is pretty much either already-proven-and-paid veterans, or young players entering the prove-it stage.

That’s good from a cap flexibility standpoint, to be sure.

Even with re-signing Wagner, the Seahawks figure to have a ton of cap space going forward – Seattle was listed as having the second-most in the NFL in 2020 before signing Wagner by OvertheCap.com at roughly $74 million and have only five significant contracts for 2021 (Wilson, Wagner, Duane Brown and Tyler Lockett, and to a lesser extent, kicker Jason Myers).

But the Seahawks got to where they did under Carroll and general manager John Schneider by finding their own young players and then paying them as they reached their prime, not by spending heavily on outside free agents. There were a few exceptions such as Michael Bennett and Cliff Avril to fill specific needs, but spending crazy in March has a far-less track of success in franchise-building not just for the Seahawks but elsewhere around the NFL.

And that makes this season as intriguing as any in the Carroll/Schneider era.

The team is really high on a number of young players such as second-year cornerback Tre Flowers, third-year corner Shaquill Griffin and at this point, basically everyone in the 2019 draft class. And maybe 2016 first-rounder Germain Ifedi can finally turn the corner after showing some promising signs a year ago.

But what the Seahawks need now is for some of those players to begin showing the same kind of star potential Wilson, Wagner, Sherman, Thomas and Chancellor did early in their careers – all made the Pro Bowl or All-Pro teams by at least their second year – and prove worthy of the same kind of contracts.

Otherwise, the good feeling generated this offseason from keeping some of Seattle’s greatest sports icons around for a while might not last as long as everyone hopes.