Five big success stories in 2021

The Seattle Seahawks are not without hope. Some stories have emerged this season that point to good process, great potential, and gifted players.

Tre Brown

Brown is Seattle’s best pick of the 2021 draft (yes, I know there were only three).

Well, look. John Schneider has drafted one successful cornerback since Richard Sherman. You want to talk about running back problems and edge problems, but that’s a long time. It’s absolutely devastating Brown wasn’t to stay in the remainder of this season and help us see if this defense is actually interesting.

But the fact remains, the days of the corners as tall as DK Metcalf are done, because Brown will start every game he’s healthy for four years. A huge find in the fourth for hot-seat Schneider.

Travis Homer in the passing game

What if I told you Homer is 6th in receiving yards this season for Seattle?

That might not be as impressive to some as the size of his biceps, but on pretty limited play it’s good. He’s ahead of Alex Collins, Penny Hart, Colby Parkinson, and is the only running back to not fumble after a completed catch this year.

I know he destroyed a play a couple weeks back on a missed assignment, but generally is not a liability blocking. Once again the team has drafted themselves into a cluster with Dallas and Homer essentially occupying similar space, but for the random 3rd-and-long magic alone (plus the fact that he’s faster than anyone on offense besides Eskridge and Metcalf), right now I’d keep Homer.

He has 128 receiving yards this year and is only 50 behind Will Dissly, which makes it a reasonable shot for Homer to finish as the fifth-highest receiver in yardage this season. Suppose that’s not ideal, but it’s interesting.

Gerald Everett

Everett had a team-high nine targets against the Washington Football Team. He had only five receptions, including a touchdown, but I believe each of the four misses was truly a bad ball by Russell Wilson.

Nothing with this team is so simple this year to allow us to say had Wilson completed his passes to Everett, the Seahawks would have won. However, there were some truly egregious misses on multiple third downs, and Everett remains the best after-catch weapon Seattle’s had in years.

Look, here’s Gerald Everett in a Seahawks game breaking lots of tackles!

The success here is not the increased targets since a few weeks of letting the tight end conversation percolate. The success is the team correctly identifying another team’s tight end for once. Wilson is a noticeably better quarterback with a potent tight end attack, and Everett deserves to stay. I hope he stays. The team gave him a respectable one-year deal, having targeted him as the first come-with-Waldron project, and it worked.

He’s only 27, he has 0 drops, has 7 broken tackles, and in a functional year would have shattered his career high for yards after catch. I hope they give Everett two more years on another deal.

The Jamal Adams Reclamation Project

Be mad. Or be happy. But what you cannot be is grateful – for sacks at least. For Adams has none.

Adams is on pace to blitz far less than his career average, with old Ken Norton Jr using him off the line of scrimmage this year.

This has been very awkward for the relevant conversation because making a backfield safety makes two first rounders look much worse. Two first rounders was very interesting when he’s on the screen smashing quarterbacks all the time, less so when he’s not even in frame half the time. Even if it’s a better use of his talents.

Which, of course, it’s not, but it’s not necessarily a worse use of his talents. My personal argument is that Norton Heard a Who was at cornerback and decided the team needed additional help in coverage this year. Also the pass rush was supposed to be, like, a thing this season but hey it’s not our fault Carlos Dunlap turned 40.

Anyway, the fact that it finally appears that Adams generally knows what he’s supposed to do 15 yards behind the line of scrimmage, so to speak. Two interceptions is his career high. His completion % and passer rating when targeted are significantly improved over last season and continue to drop. Despite the nonexistent sack number Adams already has his second-best mark for QB hurries (5), and he’s probably going to get his second-best mark for passes defensed as well (7).

It’s nothing phenomenal, but it does seem to be something much less than a liability. And I think it’s getting better.

The reason this would fall under a success story is that if Adams is actually doing what it looks like he is doing – gaining confidence in both Seattle’s defense and playing two-high safety – it better unlocks the team’s ability to use him in both places next year. Which is something I believe is necessary for them going forward. Adams has to be able to get off the line and disrupt QB and run plays, while not being the most obvious target since Tre Flowers departed when he goes back into coverage.

2020 Draft

This was a good draft. If it saves Schneider’s job for the time being, well, meh.

But Jordyn Brooks, Darrell Taylor, Damien Lewis, Alton Robinson, and Freddie Swain were all good picks. That’s a 60% hit rate with only two duds and an uncertainty in DeeJay Dallas. But every single one of those guys are significant contributors except during the coaching staff’s indecipherable commitment to just randomly not playing Robinson. Swain was a sixth-round receiver who has become the number four target on this team, and he’s tied for the second-most TDs this year.

That’s five guys to pencil in as starters/significant contributors moving forward, which is exactly what a team needs. They do need to do it more than once every four years, but when’s the last time Schneider made three entire picks in a row that don’t suck?

Throw in the undrafted free agents and this gets real interesting. That list includes Jon Rattigan, Jake Curhan, and Josh Johnson, all of whom suited up this year.

Whatever happens with the organization this offseason, this team has more temporarily lost its way than permanently lost its talent. These aren’t even the biggest names on the team, just a reminder that in many ways yet this season is not a complete loss.