If K.J. Wright doesn’t return would Seahawks try rush end Darrell Taylor at strongside LB?
No one is pushing K.J. Wright out of Seattle. There’s too much mutual respect for that.
In fact, the free-agent linebacker and the Seahawks are willing to continue waiting to determine if their longest-tenured player is returning to the team this year.
Wright has been with Seattle for 11 seasons. He is awaiting the only NFL team he’s known deciding how much it wants to pay him for 2021. And so far this offseason, no other team in the league has made an offer to make Wright leave.
“Quite frankly, there’s so many coaches...that were on our staff that are different places,” Seahawks general manager John Schneider said, “we thought he would be signed by now.”
Coach Pete Carroll said last week he had a “really good sit-down talk” with Wright.
“We needed to hear where he’s coming from and talk about the future and what’s possible moving forward. We’re right on the nose with this deal,” Carroll said. “Like John said, K.J. is one of the classiest players you could ever expect to have in your program and been a fantastic player.
“The door is not closed to us for what we’re doing moving forward. We’ve been really clear about that, and we feel good about where we are with K.J.”
Yet that doesn’t mean the Seahawks aren’t considering who may be their outside linebacker, post-Wright.
Last weekend, in the hour after he and Schneider finished their three-pick draft, Carroll was asked if defensive end Darrell Taylor could play strongside backer. That was Wright’s position last year in Seattle’s 4-3 defensive scheme.
Taylor was the team’s second-round choice last year. The edge-rushing defensive end did not play in 2020 following leg surgery.
“Darrell Taylor does give us some flexibility. We saw him in college play on the edge quite a bit where he did some drop (off the line of scrimmage) and he was in coverage (effectively as a linebacker),” Carroll said Saturday.
“We have that as part of what we’re counting on as he comes to us and we get him out there on the field and kind of fit him in.
Then the coach added: “But we do still have to kind of uncover some of that, because we have not had a real chance to really get the work that we need to make those assessments.”
Taylor missed the entire 2020 season recovering from a surgery in January to repair a stress fracture in his lower leg. Surgeons put a Titanium rod in his leg to fix pain Taylor had from getting hurt in August 2019 and playing through it and the end of that year, his final season playing for the University of Tennessee.
The Seahawks drafted him after their medical staff had assessed Taylor would recover in time for the 2020 season. He didn’t. Taylor didn’t get on the practice field for the first time with his new team in early January. That was in the days before Seattle lost its home playoff game to the Los Angeles Rams to end its season.
It was the first time Taylor has been on any field since his final college game with Tennessee. That was Jan. 2, 2020, in the Gator Bowl. Then he played in the Senior Bowl showcase for NFL scouts in Mobile, Alabama, Jan. 25, 2020. He had his leg surgery soon after.
The need and the fit
The Seahawks drafted Taylor to be a “Leo” defensive end, the speed edge rusher off the weakside of the offense’s formation.
But that was before strongside linebacker Bruce Irvin, signed back for a second go-round with the team in 2020, tore ligaments in his knee two games into last season. Irvin missed the final 15 games and had a second surgery this past winter.
Seattle let his one-year contract expire. He’s 33 years old, unsigned. The rest of his career is in doubt.
The Seahawks also drafted Taylor before Wright’s contract ended.
The team has just three outside linebackers among the 83 players under contract right now: recent special-teamers Cody Barton and Ben Burr-Kirven plus undrafted rookie Joe Rhattigan (whose signing Seattle has yet to announce). A fourth outside linebacker, Aaron Donkor from Germany, is part of the NFL’s International Player Pathway program. He can stay in that program and exempt from the roster and playing all year, the Seahawks choose.
Wright turns 32 this summer. He’s made it clear he wants to play in 2021. He wants it to be for the Seahawks—but only at a salary he feels will reward him for playing one of the best of his 11 NFL seasons with Seattle last year.
“You know, that’s up to you know Pete and John,” Wright said in January. “They know how much I mean to this team. They know that I’m a baller. They know I’m a great teammate a great leader.”
After Irvin’s injury in September, Wright switched from a decade playing weakside linebacker to strongside. That cleared 2020 first-round pick Jordyn Brooks to play weakside linebacker on early, run downs last season.
On passing downs in nickel defense, Wright stayed in and essentially moved back to weakside linebacker next to All-Pro middle linebacker Bobby Wagner.
“It would be a great investment, in my opinion, if they invest in K.J., and to bring them back in the building,” Wright said four months ago.
“You get what you pay for. And I bring a lot to the table still.
“So they’ve got to choose wisely.”
A marker this week in the league’s offseason contract rules could make it easier for Wright to sign—somewhere. As of Monday, players signed as unrestricted free agents no longer count in the formula for determining compensatory picks next year.
A team that up to now has not been wanting to sign Wright or other unsigned free agents so as to not reduce its chances of gaining a comp pick in 2022 can now sign a guy without having worry about it affecting the comp-pick formula.
How much does this matter?
The issue of strongside linebacker may be less important in 2021 than it was last year for the Seahawks. The position is becoming the fullback of NFL defenses: largely extinct.
Including, after a one-year aberration, in Seattle.
In 2019 the Seahawks were the only NFL team to play more base defense than nickel and dime, the five- and six-defensive-back schemes. They were in base more than 68% of the time that season. That was 30 percentage points higher than any other team played base defense two years ago. It was Seattle’s first season after standout nickel back Justin Coleman left in free agency for Detroit.
Last season, with Marquise Blair (briefly) then Ugo Amadi and D.J. Reed at nickel, the Seahawks got back closer to today’s norm in the league where nickel is more than two-thirds of the time; nickel is more accurately the league’s new base defense.
Now Blair is recovered from his torn knee ligaments in September and season-ending surgery in 2020. Carroll said last weekend Blair is likely to be on the field for the start of training camp in late July. That puts the team’s second-round pick from 2019 back where he was before his injury two games into last season: the primary nickel back inside against slot receivers.
“Marquise is doing great. He’s ready to get back to working. He should be in great shape, ready to compete,” Carroll said.
“He can play both safety spots, and he does play in the slot nickel. We started the (2020) season with him and we were really with great anticipation on what we could do with him there in terms of the pressure he could bring off the edge, the tackles he can make as well as the disruptive type of coverage style. He has a unique coverage style that he plays on the slot there when he does.
“We’re wide open with whatever he brings. We’re really looking forward to it.”
Amadi, less of a hitter and more of a cover man than Blair, is also an option for nickel this year. So is the impressive Reed, if he doesn’t start at cornerback as he did to end last season.
So Seattle is full of options and varieties to play a fifth defensive back more this year.
That suggests the Seahawks may be playing less base, perhaps more toward their one-third base, two-thirds nickel defense of 2018, Coleman’s last season as Seattle’s nickel.
More nickel usually means less of the strongside linebacker; that’s the 4-3 position that most often goes away in the team’s five defensive-back, two-linebacker scheme.
If the Seahawks choose not to or can’t re-sign Wright, it would be a natural progression in Brooks’ second NFL season for him to assume the weakside-linebacker role in nickel that Wright has had for the last decade.
Carroll’s words Saturday suggest Taylor could become a candidate for the part-time role of strongside linebacker on early downs. Taylor could then move back to being an on-the-line edge rusher as a Leo end in passing situations.
The role the Seahawks drafted him to play.
“Very versatile football player,” Carroll said of Taylor, “and we’re wide open to whatever he can do.”
This story was originally published May 5, 2021 at 6:01 AM with the headline "If K.J. Wright doesn’t return would Seahawks try rush end Darrell Taylor at strongside LB?."
