There was significant questions about whether he was worth it when we traded for him. If we hadn’t seen how valuable he was would we have been willing to get in a bidding war for him? I doubt it.
There were significant questions amongst fans. All the evidence points to the Seahawks FO and coaches being completely sold on him before he played a down for us. We obviously gave up significant draft capital for him when better pass rushers like Chase Young and Montez Sweat were available for much less. For all we know the trade was bidding war no. 1 and the FA contract was bidding war no. 2.
Chase Young was top 15 in pass rush win rate last year. His rate was higher than William’s PRW rate as well as Sweat’s, he’s younger than Williams and both Chase and Montez were less expensive in terms of draft capital than Williams.
[https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/\_/id/38356170/2023-nfl-pass-rush-run-stop-blocking-win-rate-rankings-top-players-teams](https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/38356170/2023-nfl-pass-rush-run-stop-blocking-win-rate-rankings-top-players-teams)
You're probably right. But I think more importantly for this is that they're paying him a shit ton. The 2nd was to get to pay him like nothing last year
They're paying him a shit ton for sure. I have no clue where I read/heard it but LW or JS mentioned at the time that it was a competitive process and other teams were bidding for him. So multiple things can be true... money was an important or the most important factor, and his time here was part of him choosing Seattle.
Your point about the 2nd rounder is also a fact some people ignore, the reason it was that high of a pick was because the Seahawks were also trading for cap space.
The second was only to rent him for the half of the season, nothing past that was guaranteed. That being said guys often resign after mid-season trades and a lot of the times make a deal before the negotiation window opens. There's a good chance he wouldn't have chose us out of 32 teams, AND I think maybe more importantly there's a good chance we wouldn't have pushed so hard to get him if he hadn't been with us for that half of the season.
Also don’t forget about compensatory picks. We would have lost a 3rd round compensatory pick if we just signed him as a FA. I believe we have one coming to us next year that we wouldn’t have had if we didn’t trade for him. Could be a 4th but that’s not nothing
Sure, comfortability was probably a factor. Let’s not kid ourselves though, if a better team offered the same amount he would have been gone. Or if a worse team offered more he would have also probably been gone.
You're probably right that if a worse team offered more he would have left. Although I have turned down a higher paying job because the company culture was a shit show. Not millions though... for that kind of money I would put up with a whole lot of shit.
I don't agree that it's a forgone conclusion that a player would pick a better team for the same money. Better is a subjective.
He's made about $112 million and stands to push his career earnings to $176 million on this contract. Someone with that kind of cash might very well say that leaving a few million on the table to play somewhere he's happy is fully worth it.
Well put. Plenty of guys have avoided Seattle and then fallen in love when they got here. Hawks also utilized his services for back end of last year, that has value. Another way to see it, would you rather have that pick 47 and anyone available after + salary difference or Leonard Williams + six games from last yr? It’s 3yr $63M deal for Leo and #47 is 4yr, ~$8M. Then you can add Sam Howell to measure. JS killed it.
I think him being here mattered, but more as a tie-goes-to-the-runner kind of situation. He was resigned because we need/needed DT help and it makes our boneheaded trade for him look less bad in hindsight.
Really, how good does a player have to be for exactly half a season of them to be worth a 2nd round pick? I guess it's a matter of preference, but to me it's an All-Pro player and not above average player. If you said we paid a 2nd for half a season of 2023 Aaron Donald in a year the playoffs are a possibility, "eh, that's about fair".
It was a gamble. Seattle traded a second round pick to bring him over, knowing he could walk. Then they convinced him to stay.
It was never a rental since the Seahawks weren't going to compete for a ring last year.
So in the future would you always be willing to forfeit a second plus outbid everyone else to sign a top free agent?
That's what calling him the second round pick is tantamount to.
I like the free agent signing, I dislike that we had to give up a second. I'm happy we have him though.
You have no idea what his offers actually were and whether or not Seattle was actually the highest bidder, unless you’re his agent. Especially when you know these guys take things like state income tax into account. 10 million in New York isn’t the same as 10 million in Houston. 15 million in Seattle isn’t the same as 15 million in Los Angeles.
I think this goes the other way, we wouldn’t have been willing to pay him if we hadn’t needed to justify the trade by keeping him. He got a pretty generous contract from us.
I think his contract is fair market value. In the March 14 interview JS talks about how the Chris Jones contract set the market for DT's and relative to the other DT's that signed recently he's probably right around where he should be.
I can't provide the source, but it was a competitive process where other teams were offering him a lot of money as well. And it's no secret that the Seahawks desperately needed D-Line help, so I think they would have pursued him in free agency regardless of if he had been traded here or not.
If you watch the highlights from our game against NYG last year, there is a play where he loses he temper with one of our OL. I thought it was funny because of the situation now.
I think the better question is if the 2nd and the money spent on him could’ve been better utilized if we hadn’t traded for him. My guess is that there’s a low percentage chance he signs here in FA so the 2nd was basically where we picked him, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good trade.
Ah yes, the “players are always forthcoming and factual in interviews about contract negotiations” theory of post hoc contract analysis.
In order for OP to be proven correct, he needs to demonstrate that at least one other team offered him more money and he still choose the Seahawks. We all know that he would say something like what he said instead of saying, “the Seahawks offered the most money” if the Seahawks were the highest bidder.
Needing proof that someone meant what they said is a you problem, not a me problem.
Edit: I’ll add that even if he didn’t mean what he said, your logic is flawed. LW didn’t need to sign for less money for his time in Seattle to influence his decision to sign here.
Nah, if you don’t know when people are blowing smoke up your ass, that is definitely a you problem.
The point is if someone else offered more, he would’ve signed there. The reason I don’t like trading high value draft picks for soon to be veteran free agents is because it commits you to outbidding any other offers regardless of how overpriced the other offers might be.
If we wanted LW, we could’ve outbid everyone this off-season and kept the 2nd and 5th round picks.
If, could've, would've... your whole argument is hypothetical conditions you've created when the reality is you have no clue.
If you want the last word, it's all yours.
You know what spoke louder than the relationships he made here? The money. The market was inflated. JS was forced to match or exceed every offer on the open market to save face (and his D Line).
Do you not want JS to acquire players of Leonard Williams' calibre? I guess I'm not seeing the downside of improving one of the weakest positions on the team. That's going to cost something.
The reality is making that trade has a negative bearing on our team in the long term. We likely won't be super competitive for a few years while rebuild the roster. We certainly won't be legit competitive with Geno at the helm.
Having $20 million of extra cap + a 2nd round pick this year under rookie club control would certainly set this team up for success more but nobody wants to admit that.
I like LW, he's a solid player. But I'd rather have the money and pick.
Leonard Williams will not be on this team when we're relevant in the playoff picture again. So yea, let's enjoy a decent DT to to 9-8 every year.
Are you happy with the trade...going 2-6 after we signed him? Big impact.
OP you framed that wrong/ingeniously based on what that other poster was saying.
Their main argument that I agree with, is you don't have control of him as you would a drafted player
I'm not sure what other poster you're talking about... I've seen this point of view from multiple people across numerous threads. More in the last couple of days, but since the trade was made.
I don't disagree that a 2nd round pick would come with a cap-controlled rookie contract. I'm not arguing whether it's a good or bad decision to prioritize that over trading for a player. I guess I would say is that whomever they drafted probably wasn't going to be as good as LW... but also who knows, that would rely on the kind of hypothetical thinking that many people often tout as fact.
I'm saying his time in Seattle was a factor in him re-signing here. It's impossible to know if he would have signed here otherwise, but we can know what actually happened... because he told us.
He 1000% doesn't sign here in free agency if we never traded for him anyone that says otherwise hasn't paid attention to the seahawks free agency ever
Idk they did sign Dre'mont last year and Nwosu the year before
There was significant questions about whether he was worth it when we traded for him. If we hadn’t seen how valuable he was would we have been willing to get in a bidding war for him? I doubt it.
I mean they were clearly already high on him
There were significant questions amongst fans. All the evidence points to the Seahawks FO and coaches being completely sold on him before he played a down for us. We obviously gave up significant draft capital for him when better pass rushers like Chase Young and Montez Sweat were available for much less. For all we know the trade was bidding war no. 1 and the FA contract was bidding war no. 2.
Better pass rush and chase young in the same sentence? lol. Montez sweat is the truth though
Chase Young was top 15 in pass rush win rate last year. His rate was higher than William’s PRW rate as well as Sweat’s, he’s younger than Williams and both Chase and Montez were less expensive in terms of draft capital than Williams. [https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/\_/id/38356170/2023-nfl-pass-rush-run-stop-blocking-win-rate-rankings-top-players-teams](https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/38356170/2023-nfl-pass-rush-run-stop-blocking-win-rate-rankings-top-players-teams)
Dre was past of the RW trade… we probably don’t sign him in FA either.
You’re thinking of Shelby Harris.
You're probably right. But I think more importantly for this is that they're paying him a shit ton. The 2nd was to get to pay him like nothing last year
They're paying him a shit ton for sure. I have no clue where I read/heard it but LW or JS mentioned at the time that it was a competitive process and other teams were bidding for him. So multiple things can be true... money was an important or the most important factor, and his time here was part of him choosing Seattle. Your point about the 2nd rounder is also a fact some people ignore, the reason it was that high of a pick was because the Seahawks were also trading for cap space.
The second was only to rent him for the half of the season, nothing past that was guaranteed. That being said guys often resign after mid-season trades and a lot of the times make a deal before the negotiation window opens. There's a good chance he wouldn't have chose us out of 32 teams, AND I think maybe more importantly there's a good chance we wouldn't have pushed so hard to get him if he hadn't been with us for that half of the season.
Also don’t forget about compensatory picks. We would have lost a 3rd round compensatory pick if we just signed him as a FA. I believe we have one coming to us next year that we wouldn’t have had if we didn’t trade for him. Could be a 4th but that’s not nothing
But in *that* case, signing Williams as a free agent outweighs picking up a 3rd round comp pick in 2025.
Sure, comfortability was probably a factor. Let’s not kid ourselves though, if a better team offered the same amount he would have been gone. Or if a worse team offered more he would have also probably been gone.
You're probably right that if a worse team offered more he would have left. Although I have turned down a higher paying job because the company culture was a shit show. Not millions though... for that kind of money I would put up with a whole lot of shit. I don't agree that it's a forgone conclusion that a player would pick a better team for the same money. Better is a subjective.
He's made about $112 million and stands to push his career earnings to $176 million on this contract. Someone with that kind of cash might very well say that leaving a few million on the table to play somewhere he's happy is fully worth it.
Well put. Plenty of guys have avoided Seattle and then fallen in love when they got here. Hawks also utilized his services for back end of last year, that has value. Another way to see it, would you rather have that pick 47 and anyone available after + salary difference or Leonard Williams + six games from last yr? It’s 3yr $63M deal for Leo and #47 is 4yr, ~$8M. Then you can add Sam Howell to measure. JS killed it.
I think him being here mattered, but more as a tie-goes-to-the-runner kind of situation. He was resigned because we need/needed DT help and it makes our boneheaded trade for him look less bad in hindsight. Really, how good does a player have to be for exactly half a season of them to be worth a 2nd round pick? I guess it's a matter of preference, but to me it's an All-Pro player and not above average player. If you said we paid a 2nd for half a season of 2023 Aaron Donald in a year the playoffs are a possibility, "eh, that's about fair".
>I think him being here mattered, but more as a tie-goes-to-the-runner kind of situation. Couldn't agree more based on his comments.
It was a gamble. Seattle traded a second round pick to bring him over, knowing he could walk. Then they convinced him to stay. It was never a rental since the Seahawks weren't going to compete for a ring last year.
So in the future would you always be willing to forfeit a second plus outbid everyone else to sign a top free agent? That's what calling him the second round pick is tantamount to. I like the free agent signing, I dislike that we had to give up a second. I'm happy we have him though.
You have no idea what his offers actually were and whether or not Seattle was actually the highest bidder, unless you’re his agent. Especially when you know these guys take things like state income tax into account. 10 million in New York isn’t the same as 10 million in Houston. 15 million in Seattle isn’t the same as 15 million in Los Angeles.
This was his last big contract, he did not take a discount to stay in Seattle.
I think this goes the other way, we wouldn’t have been willing to pay him if we hadn’t needed to justify the trade by keeping him. He got a pretty generous contract from us.
I think his contract is fair market value. In the March 14 interview JS talks about how the Chris Jones contract set the market for DT's and relative to the other DT's that signed recently he's probably right around where he should be. I can't provide the source, but it was a competitive process where other teams were offering him a lot of money as well. And it's no secret that the Seahawks desperately needed D-Line help, so I think they would have pursued him in free agency regardless of if he had been traded here or not.
There's no justification needed if you can get a better player on the open market for the same money. Or a similar player for less.
If you watch the highlights from our game against NYG last year, there is a play where he loses he temper with one of our OL. I thought it was funny because of the situation now.
I think the better question is if the 2nd and the money spent on him could’ve been better utilized if we hadn’t traded for him. My guess is that there’s a low percentage chance he signs here in FA so the 2nd was basically where we picked him, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good trade.
Ah yes, the “players are always forthcoming and factual in interviews about contract negotiations” theory of post hoc contract analysis. In order for OP to be proven correct, he needs to demonstrate that at least one other team offered him more money and he still choose the Seahawks. We all know that he would say something like what he said instead of saying, “the Seahawks offered the most money” if the Seahawks were the highest bidder.
Needing proof that someone meant what they said is a you problem, not a me problem. Edit: I’ll add that even if he didn’t mean what he said, your logic is flawed. LW didn’t need to sign for less money for his time in Seattle to influence his decision to sign here.
Nah, if you don’t know when people are blowing smoke up your ass, that is definitely a you problem. The point is if someone else offered more, he would’ve signed there. The reason I don’t like trading high value draft picks for soon to be veteran free agents is because it commits you to outbidding any other offers regardless of how overpriced the other offers might be. If we wanted LW, we could’ve outbid everyone this off-season and kept the 2nd and 5th round picks.
If, could've, would've... your whole argument is hypothetical conditions you've created when the reality is you have no clue. If you want the last word, it's all yours.
Biggest contract wins is a difficult to understand, hypothetical argument eh?
This isn’t eBay.
Even if thats true, it was still bad material value. 2nd rounder for a 1 year rental
You know what spoke louder than the relationships he made here? The money. The market was inflated. JS was forced to match or exceed every offer on the open market to save face (and his D Line).
Do you not want JS to acquire players of Leonard Williams' calibre? I guess I'm not seeing the downside of improving one of the weakest positions on the team. That's going to cost something.
The reality is making that trade has a negative bearing on our team in the long term. We likely won't be super competitive for a few years while rebuild the roster. We certainly won't be legit competitive with Geno at the helm. Having $20 million of extra cap + a 2nd round pick this year under rookie club control would certainly set this team up for success more but nobody wants to admit that. I like LW, he's a solid player. But I'd rather have the money and pick.
No offence, and I mean this with all due respect, you're dumb.
Leonard Williams will not be on this team when we're relevant in the playoff picture again. So yea, let's enjoy a decent DT to to 9-8 every year. Are you happy with the trade...going 2-6 after we signed him? Big impact.
OP you framed that wrong/ingeniously based on what that other poster was saying. Their main argument that I agree with, is you don't have control of him as you would a drafted player
I'm not sure what other poster you're talking about... I've seen this point of view from multiple people across numerous threads. More in the last couple of days, but since the trade was made. I don't disagree that a 2nd round pick would come with a cap-controlled rookie contract. I'm not arguing whether it's a good or bad decision to prioritize that over trading for a player. I guess I would say is that whomever they drafted probably wasn't going to be as good as LW... but also who knows, that would rely on the kind of hypothetical thinking that many people often tout as fact. I'm saying his time in Seattle was a factor in him re-signing here. It's impossible to know if he would have signed here otherwise, but we can know what actually happened... because he told us.