Tag: Phil Haynes

PFF selects Duane Brown as Seahawks’ most underrated player

Pro Football Focus noted that Duane Brown of the Seattle Seahawks has been a top-10 tackle in the NFL since 2006.

The Seattle Seahawks’ offense is considered the team’s biggest strength heading into the 2020 season. Russell Wilson is obviously a big reason why, but the team has loaded up on weapons around him – including Tyler Lockett, DK Metcalf, Will Dissly, Greg Olsen, Chris Carson, and now Carlos Hyde.

However, it was a member of the offensive line, a known weakness for the Seahawks, who was selected as the team’s most underrated player by Pro Football Focus.

Duane Brown joined the team halfway through the 2017 season, and he has been a steady force at left tackle each of the last three years. He’s not only the team’s best blocker, he is a team leader and mentor – something this team will need a lot this year with so much turnover up front.

Per the article:

The Seahawks’ offensive line has been bad in recent seasons. There is no getting around that. The overall weakness of the group reflects poorly on Brown, but he has been the lone bright spot for nearly his entire tenure in Seattle after nine-plus years with the Houston Texans to begin his career. In fact, Brown (82.2 overall grade since joining the Seahawks) is the only player along the line with an overall grade above 65.0 and 1,000 or more snaps played since 2017. Per PFF WAR, he’s been the eighth-most-valuable offensive tackle in the PFF era that stretches back to 2006. There may still be a lot of questions with the group up front for Russell Wilson, but he can still rely on Brown to provide strong play at left tackle.

Brown will look to lead a unit that could have as many as four new starters next season, depending if Phil Haynes can wrestle a starting job away from Mike Iupati.

Regardless, Brown will be instrumental to this unit’s success in 2020, both on and off the field.

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Duane Brown a virtual leader for Seattle’s new look offensive line

Seahawks left tackle Duane Brown is doing his best to virtually help Seattle’s young offensive linemen get ready for the 2020 season.

At 34 years old and entering his 13th NFL season, Seahawks left tackle Duane Brown is the unquestioned leader of Seattle’s rebuilt offensive line.

The team lost three starters from last year’s team – Justin Britt, D.J. Fluker and Germain Ifedi – as well as sixth lineman/tight end George Fant.

Mike Iupati is the only starter re-joining Brown in 2020, and he will have to compete with Phil Haynes to even get his old starting job back.

All this means Brown, who has taken on a leadership and mentorship role for the Seahawks the past three years, has his work cut out for him – not just with a plethora of new faces, but with a global pandemic making it far more difficult for him to impart his wisdom and help build team chemistry ahead of Week 1.

“Good offensive line play, a major factor is chemistry and continuity,” Brown told reporters over Zoom on Wednesday. “We lost a big chunk of our starting pieces this offseason. We’ve got some new faces, we’ve got some guys who have been in the system, we’ve got some guys who haven’t been here, so just getting to learn each other, learning the terminology, communication, just learning how we do stuff here, all of that stuff is important.”

“I’m doing what I can now, virtually, over texts, phone calls, just to try to build as much chemistry as possible until we’re able to meet and physically go on the field and do stuff,” Brown continued. “Once that happens, we’ll have a small window to try to build each other up as much as possible until the season starts… I’m going to do what I can to try to fill them in as much as possible on what to expect when it’s time to go.”

Most of the offensive line positions are wide open at this point, although free agent pickups B.J. Finney and Brandon Shell are expected to start at center and right tackle, respectively, with third round pick Damien Lewis expected to replace Fluker at right guard.

The team has plenty of others who will fight for starting jobs as well, including Joey Hunt, Ethan Pocic, Chance Warmack, Cedric Ogbuehi, and Jordan Simmons – among others.

Brown is working hard to help the young guys who are new to the team, since they have not had an opportunity to work on the field during either rookie minicamps or OTA’s, which has hampered their development and ability to learn the playbook.

“For the young guys who haven’t been a part of this team, I’m doing my best just to try to talk to them to tell them what to expect,” Brown continued. “We’re going over our playbooks, any questions that anyone has, I’m answering for them. Whenever we’re up and going, we just have to try to shorten the learning curve as much as possible to get that continuity. Again, we have a lot of guys that were in the system last year, so it probably won’t be as drastic as it seems. But it still takes a little bit of time just to get that going, and OTAs and minicamp and things like that are essential. We’ll make it happen.”

The Seahawks made a lot of changes to their offensive line, but it remains to be seen how exactly the unit will come together in 2020 – and it may be a while until we can see them all together on the field.

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Mike Iupati brought in to compete with Phil Haynes at left guard

The Seattle Seahawks aren’t just handing veteran Mike Iupati his old job at left guard, he will have to compete with Phil Haynes for it.

Speaking on the radio at 950 KJR, Seattle Seahawks general manager John Schneider provided some clarity to the team’s guard situation following the selection of Damien Lewis and the subsequent release of veteran guard D.J. Fluker.

“Everybody felt like we were drafting a starting right guard in the National Football League,” Schneider said about Lewis, the team’s third round pick in the 2020 NFL draft. “He’s just a man.”

Even after cutting Fluker though, the team won’t just hand a rookie a starting job on the offensive line. Chance Warmack, who they signed early into free agency, is a former first round pick who the team believes has the ability to start in the NFL as well, and the team brought back Jordan Simmons, who started a few games for them back in 2018.

However, one of the expected sources of competition, 2019 fourth rounder Phil Haynes, is apparently going to compete to start at left guard with veteran Mike Iupati, who the team re-signed last month.

Schneider said the team decided to, “bring Mike Iupati back to add some stability on the left side [and] to compete with Phil Haynes.”

Iupati started every game he played last year, but evidently the little the team saw of Haynes near the end of the year was enough for them to consider it an open competition – which also bodes well for Lewis potentially starting on the right side.

No job is guaranteed on the Seahawks, except Russell Wilson’s, so the position battles all along the offensive line should be fun to track over the summer as this team looks to put the most competitive product on the field ahead of the 2020 campaign.

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Damien Lewis will still face competition to start at right guard

Even after the Seattle Seahawks released D.J. Fluker, rookie Damien Lewis will face competition to start at right guard in 2020.

The Seattle Seahawks released hulking right guard and fan favorite D.J. Fluker on Sunday evening, clearing $3.6 million in cap space while appearing to clear the deck for Damien Lewis – the team’s third round pick in the 2020 NFL draft – to start in 2020.

Although coach Pete Carroll sounded very confident that Lewis could start right away – going as far as to say that, “he won’t take a back seat to anybody,” Carroll’s culture of competition won’t allow him to just hand the job to a rookie right away – he’ll have to earn it.

And with 17 offensive lineman still on the roster, even after the release of Fluker and Justin Britt, competition will be aplenty whenever the team is able to get back onto the field.

B.J. Finney is expected to move into the starting center role in place of Britt, but Lewis will still face competition from a litany of names; including Phil Haynes, Jamarco Jones, Ethan Pocic, Chance Warmack, Jordan Simmons, Jordan Roos, and Demetrius Knox.

Jones could end up reverting back to tackle, his natural position out of the draft, while Pocic is an option at center as well. However, both guys could conceivably see some work at right guard over the summer.

Lewis’ primary competition is Haynes, last year’s fourth round pick who started the final game of the season after missing the first half of the year while on the PUP list.

Haynes and Lewis are similar players, and Haynes has a full-year of development at the NFL level – which could work in his favor especially with a very different training period leading up to the 2020 season.

Haynes does profile more as a left guard however, and he could settle in as the backup to veteran Mike Iupati, likely paving way for Lewis to start in his first NFL campaign.

There’s a long way to go until then though, and coach Carroll will take every last minute before making his decision of who will be protecting Russell Wilson in the trenches.

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A look at Seahawks’ offensive line after Week 1 of free agency

The Seattle Seahawks overhauled their offensive line this offseason. Here’s a look at each position battle as the roster comes together.

The Seattle Seahawks used the first week of free agency to shore up a handful of positions of need, including adding a wide receiver and bringing back an old friend on the defensive line in Bruce Irvin.

However, most of the overhaul has been done on the offensive line, where the team has signed four new players and let two players, George Fant and Germain Ifedi, leave via free agency.

Although there are likely still moves to be made, including potential cuts, more signings and of course the NFL draft, we are going to take a look at how things project out on Seattle’s offensive line as of now, and what they could look like come September.

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WATCH: Guard D.J. Fluker pulls truck in offseason workout video

Seattle Seahawks right guard D.J. Fluker posted a video on Twitter of him pulling a truck as an offseason workout.

Seattle Seahawks guard D.J. Fluker wants the world to know he’s well past the hamstring injury he dealt with last year, and he’s not planning to let anyone take his starting job in 2020.

While he could have posted a message for fans, or showed himself doing more traditional offseason workouts, Fluker instead decided to make waves by posting a video of himself pulling a truck onto his Twitter account.

“Actions speak louder than words,” Fluker wrote in the post, in which he made pulling a truck look rather easy.

Fluker remains under contract for the 2020 season, and while there is speculation he could be cut in order to conserve cap space, for now he is expected to be the team’s starter at right guard.

A dependable run-blocker who is entering his eighth NFL season, Fluker will face competition from Jamarco Jones, Phil Haynes, Jordan Simmons and potentially Ethan Pocic during training camp.

If this video has proven anything however, it’s that Fluker will be more than up for the challenge.

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Seahawks carousel of starters at left guard likely to continue

The Seattle Seahawks have had a new starter at left guard in each of the last six seasons, a streak that will likely continue in 2020.

Russell Wilson has been the starting quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks since the 2012 season. Who has lined up in front of him, particularly at the left guard spot, has been new nearly every single year.

With Mike Iupati set to hit free agency, and seemingly an unlikely candidate to be re-signed, the Seahawks are almost certainly going to have a different starter at left guard for the seventh(!) consecutive year.

Since James Carpenter made 39 starts for the Seahawks from 2011-2014, most of them at left guard, the team has cycled through Justin Britt (2015) Mark Glowinski (2016) Luke Joeckel (2017) J.R. Sweezy (2018) and now Iupati (2019).

Wilson will never talk badly about anyone or any situation he is faced with, but considering how often he has stressed the importance of continuity along the offensive line, this has to be a source of chagrin for the franchise quarterback.

The streak likely won’t end in 2020, unless the team re-signs Iupati, but there is hope that it won’t extend beyond that.

Assuming Iupati is not retained, the Seahawks could look to replace him with one of the many young, internal options they have been collecting over the past few years.

Jamarco Jones, originally drafted as a right tackle, filled in for Iupati and Fluker a handful of times this year, and looked really good as a potential NFL guard. Considering how much he struggled when he was asked to play tackle, his future may be on the interior, and he seems like a prime candidate to challenge for a starting job next season.

He’ll have to compete with 2019 rookie Phil Haynes, who thanks to a sports hernia only managed to play in two games last year. He looked pretty good in the second half against Green Bay however, and is primed to take over a bigger role in 2020.

Haynes and Jones are the primary competitors, but Ethan Pocic could be in the mix if he is not handed the starting center job by virtue of Britt’s release. Jordan Simmons and Demetrius Knox missed the entire season with injuries, but Simmons in particular looked good as a fill-in in 2018 and could be in the mix as well – and of course Seattle could use an early pick in the 2020 NFL draft to bring in some starting competition.

Seattle will almost certainly have a new starter at left guard again in 2020, but Wilson and the fans can hope whoever it is ends up sticking around for a while, creating continuity up front for a team that sorely needs it.

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Sunday’s performance could open up big role for Phil Haynes in 2020

Seattle Seahawks guard Phil Haynes impressed on Sunday against the Packers, in what amounted to an audition for a bigger role in 2020.

For most of the second half in Sunday’s loss to the Green Bay Packers, the Seattle Seahawks employed rookie Phil Haynes at left guard in place of Jamarco Jones.

It was the first game action for Haynes, save for a single snap on special teams in the wild card game against Philadelphia.

Haynes battled a sports hernia during training camp and was placed on the physically unable to perform (PUP) list for the first six weeks of the season. He was activated on November 5, but spent the rest of the year as a reserve, just trying to get caught up after missing so much time.

Haynes evidently did enough to earn playing time on Sunday, and he took advantage of the opportunity, impressing coach Pete Carroll in what amounted to an audition for a job in 2020.

“Phil did a good job,” Carroll said on Monday afternoon. “What we’ve seen in Phillip is that he’s really strong and he plays real square. He did it in that game, he did very well. Was really pleased to see him, he’s had such little play time since he’s been here, so it was great to see him do well.”

Starting left guard Mike Iupati is a free agent, and right guard D.J. Fluker could opt out of his contract and test free agency as well, so there’s definitely an opportunity for Haynes to step into a starting role in 2020.

Time will tell if he gets that chance, but having a strong performance under his belt, in a playoff game no less, certainly helps his odds.

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3 things to watch: Seattle Seahawks at San Francisco 49ers

The Seattle Seahawks have a chance to hand the San Francisco 49ers their first loss of the 2019 season on Monday night.

The Seattle Seahawks will play the biggest game of the 2019 season, at least so far, on Monday night when they take on the undefeated San Francisco 49ers in Santa Clara.

The game has massive playoff implications for both teams, and will help reignite the rivalry between the two NFC west foes.

That alone is enough to make this one of the most compelling games of the entire NFL season, but for Seahawks fans, there are even more reasons to watch tonight.

The team could potentially debut both receiver Josh Gordon and defensive back Quandre Diggs, giving fans their first chance to see them in their new uniforms.

Russell Wilson’s quest for an MVP award continues tonight as well, another storyline that has everyone’s attention at this point in the season.

Here are some more notes on what to watch for in tonight’s NFC west showdown.

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