When the Seattle Seahawks sent Russell Wilson to the Denver Broncos in the biggest trade in years, the Seahawks-Broncos game this season screamed prime-time event. Sure enough, it is scheduled as the first Monday-night game of the year.
Looking at the other end of the season, the contest against the New York Jets on New Year’s Day 2023 will be a good barometer or where the Seahawks are. The Jets game doesn’t jump off the schedule as an event, but they are the team Seattle sent two first round draft choices to in the deal that brought safety Jamal Adams to the Seahawks in 2020. If Seahawks Nation is happy with the draft choices it obtained for Russell Wilson, it has to question the picks it gave up for Adams.
Adams looked like a success in his initial year with Seattle when he had 9.5 sacks, a remarkable number for a player who mostly lives in the secondary. Last year that number fell to zero while Adams’ pass coverage skills were brought into question. In a December story on USA Today’s Seahawks Wire writer Tim Weaver ranked the Adams deal as the worst five during Coach Pete Carroll’s era with the team. A day later Patrick Olde Loohuis posted an article on Seahawks Wire in which Carroll defended the trade.
Weaver has this to say about the trade:
Investing two first-rounders for a safety in the first place was never a good idea – but the team had no choice but to double-down with a four-year, $70 million contract extension this past offseason. Even worse, Seattle’s defense hasn’t been playing to his strengths like they did in 2020.
Carroll Played in the Secondary
The thing you have to remember about Carroll is that he was an all-coast defensive back during his collegiate days at Pacific. He likes to to build the defense from the back end. Safety Earl Thomas was one of two first-round picks in 2010, the year Carroll took over as Seattle coach. Thomas was teamed with strong safety Kam Chancellor, also a 2010 rookie, for the Seahawks finest stretch, which included back-to-back Super Bowl appearances in the 2013 and ’14 seasons. After a career-ending injury for Chancellor in 2017, Carroll needed a player like Adams to fill the void.
Another reason to compare where the Seahawks are in relation to the Jets is how they’re building back up. After only three draft selections for Seattle in 2021, the team chose nine players this year. Meanwhile New York took seven players — all in the first four rounds —including two picks in the top ten. By January 1, these players will hardly be rookies anymore.
Of course I might have gone with a team like the Los Angeles Rams here. But games against division rivals come in pairs. It’s hard to say one is more important than the other.
