Now that the Seahawks shockingly have cut the cord on receiver Percy Harvin, it’s time to figure out why it happened. Multiple versions likely will emerge, but the bottom line is that Harvin’s ongoing presence threatened to disrupt team chemistry.
Hall of Fame quarterback Warren Moon, who works for the Seahawks as color analyst for the team’s radio broadcasts, explained the situation to Alex Marvez and Gil Brandt of SiriusXM NFL Radio on Friday night.
“One thing Pete Carroll wants is great chemistry on the field as well as off the field,” Moon said. “And they had a tough time trying to figure out how to fit Percy Harvin and his skill set into what they already do as a philosophy offensively with Marshawn Lynch running the football and their play-action game. And then there was a little bit of a chemistry problem within the locker room at times with Percy, because he’s a different type of guy. So I think the combination of the two made it to where he was expendable. . . .
“One thing . . . Pete is really, really big on is chemistry and everybody feeling comfortable with one another. And I think that’s what this team has been so successful with the last three years. They’ve really had a great camaraderie, and they didn’t want to do anything to disrupt that.”
Of course, if they didn’t want to do anything to disrupt that, they shouldn’t have traded for Harvin in the first place. But Carroll probably assumed -- like many coaches do -- that he could get through to Harvin. That Carroll could make a connection with Harvin. That Harvin would be different in Seattle than he’d been in Minnesota.
Carroll guessed wrong, and he opted not to compound the error by stubbornly sticking with a guy who simply didn’t fit.
In the coming days, specific details undoubtedly will emerge regarding Harvin’s lack of chemistry in the locker room. As one source explained it to PFT on Friday evening, the Seahawks possibly feared that Harvin had sufficient influence over enough of the locker room to launch a mutiny against quarterback Rusell Wilson, who despite not yet getting a franchise-quarterback contract possibly has become the target of some resentment among players who don’t share his complete devotion to the game, and who regard the third-year quarterback as a player-coach.
Regardless, the Seahawks spotted a problem, and they quickly solved it. Even if it meant giving up a first-round pick, a third-round pick, a seventh-round pick, and more than $19 million for a guy from who they got seven total games and a mid-round pick in exchange.