By Gregg Bell
The News Tribune
RENTON — The Seahawks call these practices “Bonus Mondays,” a full workout to start the week without having had a game the day before.
They’ve never had a better Bonus Monday than this.
Jadeveon Clowney, his long hair flowing out the back of his helmet down his back between the 9 and 1 on his new Seattle jersey, was practicing for the first time as a Seahawk. Pete Carroll danced—no, really, the 67-year-old coach danced—between Clowney, Ziggy Ansah and L.J. Collier as they stretched.
All three of Seattle’s top pass rushers were practicing together for the first time, six days before the season opener.
Clowney, the team’s newest sack man, was already looking forward to his first game at CenturyLink Field. That will be on Sunday, in the Seahwks’ season opener against Cincinnati.
“Ah, this fan base,” Clowney said, smiling. “This fan base is probably the craziest I’ve ever played in front of.
“I don’t think there’s anything like it.”
Is he going to play just six days after practicing with the Seahawks for the first time, his first on-field practice in eight months?
“I hope so,” Clowney said with a big grin. “I’m practicing.
“I was fixin’ to say: You practice, you play.”
Ansah is now Clowney’s Pro Bowl, fellow 6-foot-5 bookend on the Seahawks’ defensive line. He was practicing for the third time for Seattle since shoulder surgery ended his 2018 with Detroit.
Also Monday: Collier, the Seahawks’ rookie first-round draft choice, was back from his badly sprained ankle practicing for the first time in more than a month.
The Seahawks’ trio of pass rushers to solve their potentially fatal flaw—their pass rush—together for the first time. Just in time.
All signs are the trio will play Sunday.
Who says the Seahawks have issues with their pass rush? Right now, they are all good ones.
But, wait, there’s more.
More?
More related to the Seahawks stealing Clowney from the Houston in the most lopsided trade Carroll and general manager John Schneider have pulled off yet.
More of Clowney? As in, with Seattle past 2019?
Carroll says the Seahawks indeed promised Clowney during trade negotiations with the Texans and the player’s agent, Bus Cook, that Seattle would not use the franchise tag next year to keep him from a megabucks multi-year contract. That’s what Houston did this year.
Carroll emphasized the possibility of the Seahawks re-signing Clowney for 2020 and beyond “absolutely” was a key factor in Seattle trading two second-line players and a third-round draft choice for him Saturday.
“Yeah, there’s a chance that this is everything that we are looking for, for the long term. We’ll see what happens,” Carroll said.
“That’s definitely out there, without question. …His excitement about coming here, and being a part of this team, and being ready to take advantage of this opportunity, absolutely it’s in our minds that there’s a chance that can happen. …
“He wants to show us we’ve GOT to have him here.”
Clowney said Seahawks left tackle Duane Brown, his former Texans teammate until Houston traded Brown to Seattle during the 2017 season, convinced him last month he should play for the Seahawks.
Since then, that’s been his goal.
Not Miami, which Houston talked to about Clowney in an effort to get the left tackle the Texans needed.
Clowney finally got the call he wanted from the Seahawks at 1 a.m. Saturday. He flew before dawn to Seattle. He and his agent were inside Seahawks’ headquarters with Carroll and Schneider into Saturday afternoon as they finalized the trade with the Texans. They agreed upon Seattle sending defensive ends Jacob Martin and Barkevious Mingo plus that third-round draft choice to Houston.
But the deal almost died.
As Saturday morning became afternoon, Carroll said the trade became a tense, down-the-wire act. That the Seahawks came close to losing Clowney at the NFL deadline to set initial regular season rosters at 53 players.
How close?
“It interesting you would ask the question, because the way it came out there was about 20 seconds before 1 o’clock (Saturday),” Carroll said. “We are a long ways away from Houston, and a lot of stuff could happen in between, and, really, we are all sitting up in the office in there, really, JD’s there and his agent. And Matt (Thomas, the Seahawks’ chief contract man) and John and I, we are looking at the clock, waiting for the word to come back.”
Clowney was also worried about the deal falling apart at the last second.
“For sure. I was here. I was like, ‘I hope I don’t have to go back.’ That’s a long flight up here,” he said. “Let’s get this deal done and let’s play football.
“I miss playing football. I haven’t been on the field for a while.
“It’s been a long journey for me getting back here.”
Had Saturday’s 1 p.m. deadline passed without the trade becoming official, the Seahawks risked the Texans getting attracted to other players they rate similarly to Martin and Mingo becoming available around the league among the 1,000-plus NFL roster moves Saturday afternoon. That could have changed everything for Seattle.
Clowney might still be in Houston.
And the Seahawks might still be down a “special” pass rusher and athlete, in Carroll’s word, they are absolutely ecstatic they have.
“So there was a lot of drama to it,” Carroll said. “It was fun that we were able to pull it off. So, really, we didn’t know right down to the very end.”
Clowney was holding out with Houston before he finally signed his franchise-tag tender offer so the Texans can trade him Saturday. So Monday was the first time he’s practiced since the first days of January, before the Texans’ playoff loss to Indianapolis.
For now, he’s only learning the base defenses of Carroll’s system.
Yet he already knows what he loves about Seattle’s 4-3 scheme. He spent his first five years and 62 games in the league playing in Houston’s 3-4. At times he dropped into pass coverage against tight ends as an outside linebacker off the ball for the Texans.
“That played a big part in it,” Clowney said of the Seahawks running a base 4-3.
Clowney was so excellent storming into offense’s backfield in college while an end in South Carolina’s 4-3 defense, he was the first-overall pick by Houston in the 2014 NFL draft.
“Coming out of college, it was very, very different for me,” he said with a chuckle of the Texans’ 3-4.
“I get back in there being more vertical (up the field, going after quarterbacks), not dropping. Just really putting my head down and grinding. When you are going forward, you don’t think about a lot. So that’s the best thing about this defense. You’ve got guys behind you who can make all the plays, and along the front we just get moving up the field, causing havoc.
“So that’s what I like about this.”
Clowney learned something else from his first five years in the league. From Le’Veon Bell with Pittsburgh last year, he learned how to handle a team putting a franchise tag on him.
Bell wanted a longer-term deal, as Clowney still does. When the Steelers tagged Bell, Bell refused to sign the tender all season. It was an unprecedented move in the NFL’s franchise-tag era. He sat out all of Pittsburgh’s season, sacrificing his pay last season, then became a free agent. He signed that big-bucks deal he wanted this spring with the New York Jets.
“I just really tried to take control, really, of what I can control, as far as, how can I be traded?” Clowney said.
He knew, from Bell’s saga last year, if his team wanted to trade him he would be on his teams, as long as he did not sign the franchise-tag tender. He was not under Texans contract and thus was not bound to accept the best deal Houston could find. Without signing the tender, Clowney had to approve any way out of Houston.
It became obvious Texans coach Bill O’Brien, who is wholly leading that franchise after it fired its general manager this summer, wanted Clowney gone to end the holdout’s effect on his team. When Clowney narrowed his preferred destinations, reportedly to Philadelphia and Seattle, Houston’s bargaining power shrunk from 31 other NFL teams to two.
That’s how the Texans accepted to players on the margins of Seattle’s roster—Mingo was about to get cut—plus a third-round pick they would have gotten anyway next spring had Clowney left Houston as a free agent.
“I was taking that into consideration, if I don’t sign the tag maybe I can decide where I end up going,” he said.
“I got somewhere where I wanted be. That’s what happened.”
Asked if he sees himself as possibly a Seahawk for 2020 and beyond, Clowney said: “Man, I’m just really trying to take it one (day) at a time. I’m still trying to figure where the cafeteria at, where the locker room is.
“It’s all confusing. I’m just getting to know these guys. I’m not thinking far down the road. I’m thinking one day a time, game by game right now.”
To make this Seahawks Labor Day even more sunny that it already was along side shimmering Lake Washington, rookie wide receiver DK Metcalf impressed Carroll with how well he was running while fully participating in practice 13 days after his knee surgery. All signs are Metcalf will play Sunday in the opener against Cincinnati at CenturyLink Field.
Plus, in Ohio, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported Bengals starting left tackle Cordy Glenn remained in the league’s concussion protocol. Though there is much of the week for Glenn to recover, Ansah, Clowney and perhaps Collier could be debuting against a backup left tackle Sunday.
No wonder Carroll was smiling on this king of all Seahawks “Bonus Mondays,” 90 minutes after he was dancing.
“It’s amazing that we do so much, just to get started,” Carroll said.
“I couldn’t be more pumped up.”
