Seattle Seahawks: Duane Brown deal finally an investment up front
The woes of the Seattle Seahawks offensive line have been well-documented over the years, which makes the Duane Brown extension quite refreshing.
It feels like a week-to-week gripe among Seattle Seahawks and NFL fans to complain about the team’s offensive line. In fairness, complaints about the unit are far from unfounded. Quarterback Russell Wilson was seemingly running for his life throughout the majority of the 2017 season — which is really a testament to how great he is considering the success he was able to have despite that.
The complaints about the offensive line get the loudest when the NFL Draft rolls around annually. Everyone gets themselves into the mode of “Okay, this is the year the Seahawks finally invest in the offensive line again.” Then comes the draft and they rarely make a substantial commitment to an offensive lineman in the draft. For fans, it has to be infuriating.
That frustration with this part of the roster, however, makes a recent bit of news out of Seattle at the start of training camp that much more refreshing. On Saturday, the team announced that they had signed veteran left tackle Duane Brown to a three-year extension that will keep him with the Seahawks through the 2021 season.
Seattle traded for Brown in the middle of the 2017 season and, though the unit as a whole was still lackluster, they at least found someone to adequately protect Wilson’s blind side. It’s not a stretch to say that Brown performed like the best tackle that the Seahawks have seen in several years.
Critics of extending Brown will point to his age as the vet will start the season at 33 years old. It’s likely that the extension means that he will finish his NFL career with the Seahawks, or at least come close to it. However, that also opens Seattle up to the risk that Brown could start to decline as a player.
Having said that, Brown has shown no signs of that aside from an injury a couple of seasons ago that he suffered while with the Texans. However, he’s clearly recovered for that and enters the 2018 season as the best lineman on this roster by a mile. Thus, locking in a stable force on arguably the most important position on the O-line — even on the back end of his career — is a necessary and much awaited investment by Seattle.
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To be fair, there is still plenty more work that the Seahawks need to do on their offensive line moving forward. However, providing some semblance of stability for the foreseeable future by extending Brown is a positive sign. This offseason in Seattle has been about taking a new direction for the future of this organization. Perhaps that means that more addressing of and investment in the offensive line is coming. Fans can only hope.