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Shutdown Corner on the Seahawks

  • Having finally landed, Kellen Winslow looks for a fresh start in Seattle

    RENTON, Wa. -- Fresh off his second cross-country trip in the last week, former Tampa Bay Buccaneers and current Seattle Seahawks tight end Kellen Winslow is still getting up to speed in his new environs after the trade that got him out of Greg Schiano's doghouse and onto Pete Carroll's roster.

    Winslow was told last Saturday by Schiano, the Bucs' new coach, that he was persona non grata after missing a series of organized team activities, and the Bucs shipped the productive tight end to Seattle for a 2013 seventh-round pick (conditional sixth). So you'll forgive Winslow if he wasn't participating in team reps during Thursday's practice -- after flying from San Diego to Tampa to hear of the trade, and then from Tampa to Seattle to complete it, he might have been a bit jet-lagged.

    "It's kind of shocking, but that's what it is," Winslow told Ross Tucker of SIRIUS NFL Radio on Monday morning. "[Schiano] said he was upset that I wasn't working out with the team in the offseason, and then, the first week of OTAs. But, look -- I've been there the last three years, and I've had a successful career so far, and you just don't get rid of one of your best players because of that. That's just what I was told, but I have nothing bad to say about coach Schiano -- it was just a disagreement on why I'm not there yet. I was training in San Diego, and I was going to start [in OTAs with the team] today, but I got the call on Saturday that they're looking for somebody else."

    Similarly "lagged" in 2011 was the Seattle passing offense, especially at Winslow's position. Despite the free-agency acquisition of Zach Miller and a propensity for two-tight-end formations (39 percent last season), the Seahawks got just 25 receptions out of Miller, and he led the team. Winslow, in Tampa Bay's hamstrung offense, caught three times as many balls for the Bucs -- so, on the surface, Pete Carroll's excitement about the deal was understandable.

    [ Y! Sports Fantasy Minute: Unlucky break for fantasy football star ]

    "Kellen is a unique football player," Carroll said after practice. "He's got special talents. He's got a tremendous record of consistency, and I think we add a guy that we know can make things happen. But we think it's just a fantastic addition because he can make things happen, he can make plays, should be a big factor on third down and the red zone and we'll see how we fit him in. It's going to take us awhile to do that, but we're really fired up."

    The injury history is an issue -- Winslow has had six separate surgeries on his right knee -- but he hasn't missed a game in the last three years and caught at least 66 passes in each of those campaigns. He's not a dominant player, but he is very productive, and that's a balm for a team that has had a bit of a black hole at the position for most of the last decade.

    "I'll be good," Winslow said. "Zach Miller is a proven veteran here. Hopefully we'll be able to do something like the Patriots are doing with [Rob] Gronkowski and [Aaron] Hernandez. We kind of fit that mold, so I'm sure we'll be fine."

    Matching their sets to the Patriots may be wishful thinking -- there's nobody catching passes of Gronk's caliber on this team -- but the point is well-made nonetheless. What Winslow allows the Seahawks to do is to keep Miller inline as the more traditional blocker, while Winslow lines up in different parts of the formation on the other side. Though Tampa Bay's 2011 offense was the ultimate cure for insomnia, Winslow was all over the place -- in the formation, flexed out, and sometimes, the man widest out from the line. He was also oftentimes the one tilting the field and forcing coverage out of the box, as much as anyone did for the Bucs last season. That's appealing to a Seahawks team desperate to do more with tight ends.

    "He can do a bunch of stuff and he's done a lot of it in his career," Carroll said. "He's a wide receiver in a tight end's body. He's got all of that ability and route-running like I mentioned, but more than that he makes plays. As well as — the thing that I love about the guy the most — is that he's a great competitor. He just loves to play the game and we can't have enough of that around here."

    Winslow agreed. "Yeah, you want to create mismatches so I'm kind of the knight in the chess game. You can move me around and control the middle of the field. So I guess you could label me as that. I do like to move around a lot though."

    As to Winslow's reputation for off-field concerns and on-field attitude, it appears to be a manageable risk. None of Winslow's 2012 contract, inherited in the deal, is guaranteed, so the Seahawks can continue their practice of finding the fits with value gambles as they go.

    "We like guys with special dimensions and he's got them," Carroll said of his newest weapon. "He's a real route-runner and a great, great catcher and he does stuff with the ball after he catches it, too. Zach is a dynamite 'Y' tight end in this offense — we use him for so many different special things because he's so good at it. To have the complement of these two guys going and the way we can mix it it's a really exciting aspect for our offense ... we're going to make the most of this trade and it's going to be really good."

    As Winslow said on Thursday, "It's good to have a job." Now on his third NFL team in an eight-year career, the first-round pick of the 2004 Cleveland Browns has an opportunity to move past the past and get started on a better future.

  • Seahawks trade for Kellen Winslow; hope to make 2-TE sets more productive

    In 2011, per the game-charting of NFL.com's Brian McIntyre, the Seattle Seahawks put two tight ends on the field 39 percent of the time, one of the highest figures in the NFL. However, they didn't get much production from those tight ends. Former Oakland Raiders tight end Zach Miller, acquired as a free agent before the 2011 season, caught just 25 passes on 44 targets for 233 yards and no touchdowns -- Seattle's injury-weakened offensive line put Miller in a position to block most of the time. Despite that, Miller led the team in all categories at the position.

    On Monday evening, the Seahawks endeavored to become more productive with the 2-TE sets they prefer by trading for ex-Tampa Bay Buccaneers tight end Kellen Winslow. For assuming Winslow's contract, the Seahawks gave up just a seventh-round draft pick in 2013 (conditional sixth if Winslow meets certain performance guidelines). Winslow has three years left in a six-year, $36.1 million contract he signed in 2009, but the $3.3 million he's due this season in base salary is not guaranteed.

    The eight-year veteran was deemed expendable by new Bucs head coach Greg Schiano after missing a recent round of OTAs, and it was Winslow himself who revealed the news -- last Saturday, Schiano told him that the Bucs were looking to make a deal and get him out of there. In his place, the Bucs signed former Indianapolis Colts TE Dallas Clark to a one-year deal.

    [Related: Trading Kellen Winslow could be risky for the Buccaneers]

    "It's kind of shocking, but that's what it is," Winslow told Ross Tucker of SIRIUS NFL Radio on Monday morning. " [Schiano] said he was upset that I wasn't working out with the team in the offseason, and then, the first week of OTAs. But, look -- I've been there the last three years, and I've had a successful career so far, and you just don't get rid of one of your best players because of that. That's just what I was told, but I have nothing bad to say about coach Schiano -- it was just a disagreement on why I'm not there yet. I was training in San Diego, and I was going to start [in OTAs with the team] today, but I got the call on Saturday that they're looking for somebody else."

    Winslow was especially surprised, given his claim that he has participated in a team event before in this preseason. "There was a previous minicamp -- I went to that. It was a three-day minicamp and then, I came back down to San Diego to train, and I was going to start [back with the team] today."

    According to Winslow, he flew cross-country from San Diego to Tampa to hear that he was going to be gone. "They tried to catch me before I left, but that didn't work out."

    [Related: Detroit Lions bar own player from practice after fight with teammate]

    In Seattle, there is room for a player as productive as Winslow has been in the recent past. Drafted sixth overall by the Cleveland Browns in the 2004 NFL draft, Winslow most recently averaged 72.6 catches, 792.3 yards and four touchdowns in each of the last three seasons for Tampa Bay. In 2011, he was the fourth-most targeted tight end in the NFL -- only Jimmy Graham, Rob Gronkowski and Brandon Pettigrew had more footballs thrown in their general direction by their quarterbacks. He played through pain on a right knee that has seen six different surgeries, and though the sheer physical upside is limited at this point in his career, Winslow seems a good risk for a Seattle team in need of far more consistent production from his position.

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