Seahawks 'paying very close attention' to teams for potential trade markets
The Seattle Seahawks lost a thriller to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday and are now 3-2. With the San Francisco 49ers atop the NFC West at 4-1, and the Los Angeles Rams tied with Seattle at 3-2, the Seahawks could consider making some moves at the trade deadline.
After their week five performance, the defense has been propped up as an area the Seahawks could address. There have been trade rumors around Riq Woolen in the secondary, but regarding Seattle adding players, there has not been much buzz.
In a recent mailbag, Seahawks.com senior reporter John Boyle was asked what kind of moves could be coming for Seattle. While he didn't reveal any clear expectations, Boyle did allude to what John Schneider is working on at the moment, and it's an encouraging report.
Seahawks keeping close tabs on teams around the NFL ahead of the trade deadline
"I'm not going to pretend to know who or what position group the Seahawks might target in a potential trade, if they were to make one," Boyle writes, "But what is safe to say is that Schneider and the personnel department are paying very close attention to what teams around the league are doing and trying to decipher who might be available, and then looking at who could be a fit to add to the team."
This process isn't uncommon, and it's the expected one for a team like Seattle, which should be a playoff team this season. With a strong offense and solid defense, Seattle has all the reasons to be a buyer at the trade deadline.
Some positions on defense might be more obvious, like the needs at corner, linebacker, and safety, but the Seahawks aren't going to lock into just those spots.
As Boyle mentions, the Seahawks will be looking through teams around the league to see what players would be good additions to the roster at the trade deadline.
Seattle doesn't have any clear or dire needs like some other teams might have, but there are still plenty of ways to add to this roster.
With Sam Darnold looking like a top quarterback, the Seahawks have even more reason to be willing to buy at the deadline. For now, there aren't any concrete plans, but with the trade deadline getting closer by the day, Seattle making a trade or two wouldn't be out of the question.
As Boyle reports, the Seahawks are keeping close tabs on teams around the league for potential trade deadline additions. There are plenty of teams with losing records on the verge of being full-blown sellers, and Seattle might be buying, especially with their track record of in-season trades at the deadline.
Giants will have to take their lumps with Jaxson Dart now, just as they did with Eli Manning in 2004
Before Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning won two Super Bowls together, before they won anything together really, they were just a head coach and the rookie quarterback he was banking on trying to get through the coming weeks. In November 2004 Coughlin had elevated Manning to the starting job and the losses began to pile up. Not only was the team unsuccessful, Manning had some inarguably awful performances.
Coughlin thought back on those days on Wednesday night as he hosted his Jay Fund’s 21st annual Champions for Children Gala in Manhattan, an event that began that same year he and Manning came to New York.
He mentioned the 31-7 loss in Washington where Manning completed just 12 passes. He recalled the week after that, in Baltimore, when the Giants lost, 37-14, and Manning completed just four passes with a rating of 0.0.
“Eli came in and sat in my office first thing in the morning [after those games],” Coughlin said. “He wanted to assure me that he could do it and that he could be the quarterback of the New York Giants and that he would improve and be better each time out.
“And he was.”
It’s not just the coincidence of timing that brought those memories back 21 years later of course. The Giants now find themselves in a bit of a similar situation. They have a new rookie quarterback. They are struggling. Jaxson Dart may have won his first start but he committed three turnovers last week against the Saints — not quite Rookie Eli Bad — and had a short week to prepare to face the defending Super Bowl champion Eagles on Thursday night at MetLife Stadium this week.
Coughlin didn’t want to pass along any direct advice to Brian Daboll as he navigates through this somewhat familiar terrain.
“Brian knows what he is doing,” Coughlin said.
But Coughlin did spend some time with the Giants at training camp. He did get an up close look at Dart. And he has been watching Dart play the last few weeks. He’s impressed. He also knows it could take some time before the skills Dart has actually start to show up.
“He’s a good player, he’s a good athlete,” Coughlin said. “As with all young rookie quarterbacks there is going to be a learning curve… Everybody from here on out is going to prepare a different blitz package for him, something he hasn’t seen, and he has to go through it.”
The Giants have to go through it with him.
Manning in 2004 had some advantages that Dart currently does not, among them the players who would eventually become the franchise’s all-time leading rusher, all-time leader in receptions, and most prolific tight end in their history. Dart has played less than one half with Malik Nabers and heads into Thursday’s game without Darius Slayton (although alot of good Slayton did for him last week with a drop, a poor adjustment on a deep pass, and a fumble before injuring his hamstring). The guy who could have been Dart’s wingman in the backfield as the great difference-making running back? He's playing for the other side Thursday night.
The hope the Giants have now is the same that the Giants had in 2004, that whatever tribulations a rookie quarterback goes through result in success. And there is good reason to believe that it can. Just last weekend we saw two second-year quarterbacks blossom in Bo Nix and Drake Maye. They beat the Eagles and Bills, respectively. Had they not played as rookies, had they not gotten those growing pains out of the way (and Nix even did it while getting to the playoffs, which was a bonus), it’s unlikely they would have been able to accomplish that.
It's why all the hand-wringing over wanting Dart to sit and watch and learn from Russell Wilson was always just a fantasy. They wanted him to be Patrick Mahomes. The truth is Patrick Mahomes would probably have become Patrick Mahomes whether he played one game as a rookie or all 16 of them.
While a big part of that rookie quarterback challenge is the individual’s development, there are also 52 other players on the roster to think about as a head coach. Coughlin said it’s important that they all understand what is happening and why.
“It’s obvious, but in the circumstances, as they go along, you realize the talent [of the quarterback], what is there, and what’s to come,” he said. “With Eli, despite all the first year struggles — and look at his brother, what was his brother, 3-13 or something? –— when you go through it you pay the price and you learn from it. We came back in ’05 and won 11 games.”
The 2026 Giants should be so lucky.
Coughlin isn’t coaching any longer but he remains very involved in the Jay Fund, the organization he began to help families dealing with pediatric cancer. This is the 30th year for the organization and Coughlin was very excited about next year because it will be the 31st. Jay McGillis, the former Boston College player the foundation is named after, wore number 31.
At age 79, Coughlin said he does it for the very same reasons why he started doing it.
“Put it this way,” he said. “September was Pediatric Cancer Awareness Month. September ended. But guess what? Cancer hasn’t ended and the opportunity to help families who find themselves in desperate situations is still there so that drives us to want to continue to help.”
The two words he uses more often than any in his current role are resilience and perseverance.
They happen to have been two pretty critical aspects to his former role in football, too.
“I think a rookie quarterback in any situation anywhere goes through the exact same thing,” Coughlin said. “It’s something they all go through.”
Manning came out the other end a winner and a champion. So too did Coughlin. Dart’s journey is just beginning.
