Seahawks bolster offensive line, acquire Brown from Houston
Published 1:30 am Monday, October 30, 2017
RENTON — The Seahawks are as tired as you are of watching their offensive line.
General manager John Schneider said Monday Seattle agreed to a pending trade with the Houston Texans for Duane Brown, a three-time Pro Bowl left tackle and 2012 All-Pro.
The deal was not yet final Monday night, pending final paperwork and other loose ends, such as notifying the NFL.
But the trade is done in principle.
“He looks like a big door,” Schneider said of the 6-foot-4, 318-pound veteran of 10 NFL seasons, all with the Texans. “Power. Physicality. He’s got great hands. He’s got really good instincts. He’s just a mountain of a man.”
Schneider confirmed the Seahawks are sending defensive back Jeremy Lane and draft picks to Houston. Lane’s departure a season and a half into a four-year, $23 million extension means the Seahawks have 12 players remaining from the 2013 team that won Super Bowl 48.
“We’ve reached an agreement with the Texans today to acquire Duane Brown,” Schneider said at Seahawks headquarters late Monday afternoon. “He’s a heck of a player, been a heck of a player for a long time. We are very excited about it. He’s has been a captain of his offense for a number of years.”
Brown, 32, ended a lengthy contract holdout with Houston last week. He made his season debut against the Seahawks in Seattle on Sunday. He played 68 of 71 plays at left tackle as Seattle got a season-high five sacks of Deshaun Watson in a wild, 41-39 win.
“We are just really excited to get him up here — get him back up here,” Schneider joked. “He could have stayed overnight, I guess. He’s a man’s man — if you can say that. He’s a stud of a guy.”
ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported Seattle is sending a fifth-round pick in 2018 and a second-round pick in 2019 to Houston.
“We’ve talked to the players. We’ve talked to Jeremy,” Schneider said. “And (coach) Pete (Carroll) and I have talked to Duane.”
Brown has allowed 47 sacks in 133 career games. That’s one sack every three games. The Seahawks will take that.
According to profootballreference.com, Brown had had just seven accepted holding penalties against him in his 10 seasons. The Seahawks will take that, too.
Brown is owed $4,976,470 for the final nine games of this regular season. That’s the prorated amount remaining on Brown’s $9.4 million salary for 2017.
The Seahawks had an estimated $1.4 million in available salary-cap room entering Monday.
Lane is scheduled for $2,117,647 over the final nine games of this season, off his $4 million guaranteed salary for 2017.
He posted on his Twitter account Monday: “Thank you Seattle for the opportunity. I had a blast the 5 years I was here. Now for a new journey ….Houston here I Come”
The Seahawks need to clear a little over $2 million off its cap to fit Brown under it. That will all but surely come in the form of getting Brown to agree to restructure his 2017 contract. He has a non-guaranteed $9.75 million scheduled to him in 2018, the final year of his existing deal.
“We want him to finish his career here,” Schneider said.
That suggests a team-friendly extension beyond 2018, back-loaded with later cap charges and front-loaded with bonus cash for this year and next.
The Seahawks have needed offensive line help for year, acutely since August when their expected left tackle George Fant got a season-ending knee injury and surgery.
Schneider said the time of Fant’s injury is when he first contacted Texans general manager Rick Smith about the possibility of acquiring Brown. Schneider said he and Smith have been talking “on and off” about a possible trade for the last 2 1/2 months.
“We just kept talking and texting, and it ended up coming to fruition,” Schneider said.
Rees Odhiambo, a 2016 draft choice, has started the first seven games of his career at left tackle to begin this season. He and right tackle Germain Ifedi have struggled — at times mightily — against edge pass rushers. Another left tackle option Seattle thought it would have this season, former Jacksonville left tackle Luke Joeckel, was starting at left guard until he had knee surgery this month. Carroll said Monday Joeckel is likely to miss at least another month.
Quarterback Russell Wilson has been hit 56 times and sacked 16 times through seven games.
The run blocking has been even worse. Seattle rushed 21 times for 33 yards Sunday against Houston, tied for its lowest rushing total since 2011. Take out two scrambles by Wilson for 21 yards in the fourth quarter and that rushing total was 1 yard on 19 carries.
Seattle is 21st in the league in rushing, an area it vowed to improve this season. And that 97.6 yards per game is boosted by Wilson’s scrambles away from pressure on pass plays, which account for most of his 194 yards on the ground. That leads all active Seahawks players.
Brown is arriving to fix all that. And more.
“He’s an alpha male…These guys know who he is,” Schneider said of the Seahawks’ young offensive linemen. “He’s one of those guys. It’s kind of like what we saw last week with us bringing in Dwight Freeney. Guys were like, ‘Holy (cow)! That’s Dwight Freeney!’ Same thing with this guy. They all know who Duane Brown is.”
Thomas’ iffy status
Earl Thomas has a hamstring strain that might keep him out of Sunday’s home game against Washington — but might not.
That was Carroll’s day-after assessment about the injury his three-time All-Pro safety got in the fourth quarter of the win over the Texans.
“He’s OK. He’s a little sore,” Carroll said. “We looked at it and he’s got a strain that we are going to figure out, maybe in the lower level of the degrees of it. And we won’t know, we won’t know until later in the week.”
A strain to most players may mean putting playing in a game in jeopardy. What’s it mean to the famously determined Thomas?
“I don’t know. It’s all the nature of it,” Carroll said. “(Richard Sherman) had one a couple weeks ago and he was able to just get through it. So it just depends, and we won’t know until we get going (this week). You saw his nature; his nature is to go back out and play, which he plans on doing. But we will take good care of him, figure it out. It will just be some days before we know.”
Thomas was chasing DeAndre Hopkins on the Houston receiver’s 72-yard touchdown catch and run with 4:49 remaining when he grabbed the back of his right leg.
Thomas doesn’t easily stay off the field. He missed a game at Tampa Bay in November because of another strained hamstring. That ended his streak of 118 consecutive regular-season and playoff games started to begin his career, a Seahawks record for a defensive player.
The following week he broke his leg against Carolina and missed the remainder of last season.
Bradley McDougald replaced Thomas at free safety for the Texans’ final two drives after Thomas got hurt. The Seahawks (5-2) signed McDougald, a former starter with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, this past offseason because they like his physicality paired with his coverage skills.
Defensive coordinator Kris Richard has been finding ways to get him on the field lately, and he was utilized as a bigger nickelback two games ago against New York Giants tight end Evan Engram.
“Yeah, we are really, really fortunate,” Carroll said. “Bradley is a front-line guy.”
