Seattle Seahawks: Evaluating six 2019 free agency departures

The Seattle Seahawks did a good job of holding onto key players in free agency, but a few still slipped away and joined new teams.

The Seattle Seahawks worked hard to retain D.J. Fluker, Frank Clark and K.J. Wright in free agency, but the team had to say goodbye to several other players as a result. The team does not have the financial freedom of some other organizations.

Not only will Seattle have to pay Clark as soon as possible, but the team will also need to negotiate new deals for Bobby Wagner, Jarran Reed, and Russell Wilson next offseason. That puts the organization in a future cap crunch and made it so the team had to let a few key contributors walk.

So far, six former Seahawks have signed with new teams in free agency. Of that group, three were starters and one moved in and out of a starting role throughout the year. How many of these players would the Seahawks have kept if they had the proper cap space? It’s hard to say.

Realistically, some of these partings were for reasons that weren’t entirely financial. Some players just wanted to go to teams where they felt they had greater chances of receiving playing time.

If we breakdown the players who have left the team and signed with new organizations, we see that three offensive and three defensive players have departed. The difference comes when we look at the starters.

Two of the starters who left were on defense, along with occasional starting cornerback Justin Coleman, are now gone. The Seahawks defense has already been battered by injuries since the end of the Legion of Boom era. If these losses are going to have any impact, they’ll be on that side of the ball.