The Seahawks went to customary lengths on Monday to find another cornerback, and to extend their surest thing on the iffy offensive line.
The Cleveland Browns announced they traded cornerback C.J. Smith to the Seahawks for a conditional seventh-round draft choice in 2020.
That’s basically John Dorsey, the Browns’ new general manager, giving Seahawks GM John Schneider a player for nothing, a player Cleveland and its new regime may have been releasing otherwise.
Schneider, Seattle’s GM, and Dorsey worked together in Green Bay’s scouting and personnel department beginning in the 1990s.
What you need to know about the 24-year-old Smith: His arms are 32 inches long.
Smith is 5-foot-11, 189 pounds, not the prototypical size for Seahawks cornerbacks. But his arm length is the magic size coach Pete Carroll just about requires in his cornerbacks. Smith’s arms are 32 1/8 inches, in fact.
Since Schneider and Carroll arrived to run the Seahawks in January 2010, Seattle has drafted eight players with the intent on having them play cornerback. All eight have had 32-inch arms. That includes Richard Sherman in the fifth round in 2011 and the rookie who started opposite the three-time All-Pro at right cornerback for the Seahawks last season, Shaquill Griffin. It also includes last year’s sixth-round pick, Mike Tyson.
Seattle on Monday also extended Justin Britt’s contract time. The team exercised a $5 million option on to keep its starting center and line’s surest man tied to the Seahawks through 2020.
Had the Seahawks declined to pick up the option at the end of Britt’s three-year contract extension for $27 million he signed last summer, they would have voided the final year of Britt’s deal. That would have made him a free agent following the 2019 season, and it would have changed his salary for this year from $2.75 million to $7.75 million.
Picking up the option gives Britt that $5 million difference in the form of a bonus this year, instead. His salary-cap charge for 2018 stays at $6,167,000.
This year will be the third consecutive one with Britt as the starting center, and fifth straight year Britt has started for the Seahawks since they drafted him in the second round in 2014 out of Missouri.
In Seattle, that’s a relative eternity on the in-flux O-line. Germain Ifedi is next in starting seniority there, at two seasons. He’s been at two different positions already: right guard as a rookie first-round pick in 2016, then right tackle last season.
Britt was the starting right tackle as a rookie in 2014; he started Super Bowl 49 there. In 2015 he moved to left guard. It didn’t work out well for him there, either, so then-line coach Tom Cable moved Britt to center before the 2016 season. That was after Cable tried and failed to use Drew Nowak and Patrick Lewis as his starting center in 2015.
Britt was a revelation at center in 2016, playing well enough to be a Pro Bowl alternate. He’s been there since. Now he will have a new line coach in 2018, Mike Solari.
Smith has played in 13 games the last two NFL seasons after Philadelphia signed him in May 2016 as an undrafted free agent from North Dakota State. He played in 10 games that year for the Eagles, on special teams and at cornerback. He was on Cleveland’s practice squad from last September into December then played in three games for the Browns.
The Seahawks need to replace Sherman. Two weeks ago they waived him to save $11 million in salary-cap space for this year. Byron Maxwell is the veteran who started for Sherman at left cornerback last season after Sherman ruptured his Achilles tendon in early November. But Maxwell is an unrestricted free agent. Seattle wants to re-sign him, but the 30-year old is not the long-term answer there. Now that he is going shopping for new teams, Maxwell could get a contract offer Seattle may not want or be able to match.
Expect the Seahawks to select another cornerback in next month’s draft. And expect him to have 32-inch arms, too.
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