Seahawks General Manager John Schneider knows what it looks like.
But he insists that the Seahawks aren’t rebuilding, just tweaking a roster that still has many talented players.
“It’s just always very, very hard to make those decisions to move on from people, but that’s what we have to do in order to be a consistent championship-caliber football team,’’ Schneider said, via Bob Condotta of the Seattle Times. “We don’t want to be having these major rebuilding years. We want to be able to have little re-sets, if you will.”
So far this offseason, the Seahawks have cut Richard Sherman and traded Michael Bennett, offered Earl Thomas in trade and lost Sheldon Richardson, Jimmy Graham, and Paul Richardson in free agency (while acknowledging that Kam Chancellor and Cliff Avril won’t likely play for them again). They’ve backfilled with a lesser grade of players, but Schneider emphasized what’s left.
“Bobby Wagner, Duane Brown, Doug Baldwin, Russell Wilson, there’s a pretty cool group of guys, and I’m leaving guys out, I know,’’ he said. “It’s not like 2010 [when Schneider and coach Pete Carroll were hired] when we felt like we had to make these sweeping changes. We’ve been here since 2010, and it feels like we’ve just constantly been doing this every single year. It’s not like we have this, ‘OK, season’s over, now we’re going to do A, B and C.’ We’re working all the way through the year.”
And that work continues, as he acknowledged that Thomas is available for the right price, and that they aren’t talking to him about a contract extension.
“Earl’s under contract for another season, and if we’re not listening to everybody we are not doing a very good job,’’ Schneider said. “So we have to listen to everything that’s going on all the time.”
And that means the Seahawks are going to look very different when they take the field this fall. Which sounds like a rebuild, even if that’s not what they want to call it.