There’s a significant chance that the Seattle Seahawks will trot out a starting offensive line exclusively consisting of their own draft picks. It’s been damn near 20 years since the Seahawks have had a universally recognized top-level offensive line, and the hope is that this set of picks is the start of something special.
Spoiler: Don’t be surprised if we’re in for tough sledding.
This was the storyline for the injury-riddled Seahawks OL last season…
The group that started against the Cardinals entered the game with 74 career starts worth of experience.
(For comparison, the 2016 line of Fant-Glow-Hunt-Ifedi-Gilliam line that delivered a horrific performance against the Bucs entered the game with 51 starts.) https://t.co/G9p1hyCUD5
— John P Gilbert (@JohnPGilbertNFL) October 22, 2023
With Damien Lewis, Evan Brown, and Phil Haynes all gone, it’s a new day for Seattle’s interior offensive line. Even the tackles are still halfway through their rookie contracts.
If we assume that Christian Haynes, a career right guard at UConn, will move to left guard and the Seahawks will not bother keeping veteran Laken Tomlinson around, here’s the experience (or lack thereof) for Seattle’s hypothetical 2024 OL:
Potential Seahawks Week 1 starting offensive line
LT Charles Cross: 31 starts (1,927 snaps)
LG Christian Haynes: 0 starts (rookie)
C Olu Oluwatimi: 1 start (129 snaps)
RG Anthony Bradford: 10 starts (661 snaps)
RT Abraham Lucas: 22 starts (1,251 snaps)
64 combined professional starts and less than 4,000 offensive snaps logged. The bulk of the experience is at the two tackle spots, with Lucas a legitimate question mark given how much time he missed last year due to injury. If we acknowledge that Bradford’s starts were a product of Phil Haynes’ injuries, you’re looking at (most likely) three first-year starters on the interior.
Laken Tomlinson is the wild card as the veteran and 2021 Pro Bowl selection. He is durable and has been a starting left guard for nine seasons. His two seasons with the New York Jets went very poorly, which has rightfully sparked some trepidation over whether or not the Seahawks should start the 32-year-old at LG over a rookie with greater upside.
We’ve seen the Seahawks try and plug in veterans on cheap deals in lieu of draft picks (or even drafting at the position) in recent seasons. They traded for Gabe Jackson, signed and started Mike Iupati, emergency signed and started Jason Peters last year, and infamously signed and started Luke Joeckel. Jahri Evans was also a Seahawk for a minute and was still really good, but naturally he was cut and went back to the New Orleans Saints.
It’s possible that this trend of starting vets continues with Tomlinson, or we see the Seahawks actually commit to a youth movement that amounts to “sink or swim.” Having experience while also being on the other side of 30 can also be code for “washed up.”
As fans, we tend to automatically assume or at least hold the belief that draft picks will be good. It is really hard for offensive linemen to be good right out of the gate, even if you have highly regarded prospects or highly regarded college coaches like Seahawks OL coach Scott Huff.
A 2020 article from PFF’s Timo Riske (H/T John P. Gilbert) outlined the learning curve for college prospects entering the NFL. One section focused on the offensive line, with a graph showing that offensive linemen (regardless of position) have a distinctly difficult time performing well in the front-half of their rookie contracts.
We continue our analysis with the trenches and start with the offensive line. There are two notable observations here:
1.) Offensive linemen struggle during their rookie season much more than other positions and, maybe even more interestingly, offensive linemen don’t reach their full potential before Year 3 or even Year 4.
2.) Offensive tackles, in particular, seem to constantly develop throughout their rookie contract, as the recent example of D.J. Humphries illustrates. Humphries turned into a solid pass protector in his fourth year and earned himself an extension. While one should still exercise caution when observing a sudden breakout for an offensive lineman in Year 4, our findings yield an encouraging result and should increase our confidence in such performances being sustainable.
If Lucas and Cross are healthy, I don’t anticipate struggles at the tackle position. We may theoretically see them make third-year leaps. But if the Seahawks want a functional offense in 2024, it’s most likely going to be trial by fire for an extremely inexperienced interior offensive line.
Of course, if you lower your expectations for returning to the playoffs (and possibly anticipate Seattle being bad enough to pick in the top-10), you’ll care not one bit about win-loss record this season and live with growing pains if it means valuable development for the young players. What you shouldn’t expect is the Seahawks to have a high-level OL in 2024, and that means Ryan Grubb is going to have to do a hell of a job scheming around that.
