Seahawks $50M in Cap Room: Sign All 3 Ravens Star Free Agents?
What a nice, neat package it would be if new Seattle Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald could simply wave his salary-cap magic wand and steal all of the top free agents from his old crew, one of the best defenses in football.
Need a defensive lineman? Steal from the Baltimore Ravens and sign Jadeveon Clowney!
Need a linebacker? Steal from the Ravens and sign Patrick Queen!
Need a defensive back? Steal from the Ravens and sign Geno Stone!
Macdonald is the former Ravens defensive coordinator, so he surely knows these players well. And with the Tyler Lockett transaction, the Seahawks can have about $50 million to spend in NFL free agency, which launches on Monday. But the ESPN suggestion that Macdonald is such a Pied Piper that he is going to reload the Seattle defense in one fell swoop by plucking some of the best of the best, one from each position group?
We will suggest that ESPN is "short-cutting'' its way to a paywall story that has more headline-grabbing appeal than it has reality.
This much we will concede: Queen is projected to be a $20 million APY guy, with Clowney and Stone each projected to come in at about $8 million. So the Seahawks could make the math work.
But this concept would mean that the powerhouse Ravens (who don't have much room to play with right now) lose out on all three guys. And that no other team intercedes. And that a trio of guys who just had career years - Stone, with seven interceptions, Clowney with 9.5 sacks and Queen with 133 tackles - all get on the same private jet together to create Macdonald's "Seattle Ravens.''
Put them together in Baltimore and Queen, Stone and Clowney helped anchor a Macdonald defense that led the league in sacks (60), allowed the fewest points per game (16.5), and was tied for the NFL lead in takeaways (31).
Put them together in Seattle? It seems like a fanciful idea ... though we're sure new coach Macdonald would vote in favor of it.
