RIP LOB

[oldhawkfan]

With the injury to Earl Thomas, the LOB is now just a fond memory. The new guys might attempt to say that they are still the LOB, but they aren't. The LOB was a special group of DBs and the nickname was essentialy theirs.

With the demise of the LOB, and the current makeup of this roster, I was curious as to the experience factor of this current team. I went back and looked at the age and experience of the rosters from 2013-2018. What I expected to find was not exactly what I did find. I expected to see a somewhat younger team in 2014, peaking in age and experience in 2016 or 2017 and then seeing a very young roster in 2018. What I actually saw was a fairly consistant rate of age and experience throughout those 6 years.

2013 Average age of roster-25.7 years. Average amount of experience-2.9 years
2014 Average age of roster-25.7 years. Average amount of experience-2.6 years
2015 Average age of roster-26.3 years. Average amount of experience-3.2 years
2016 Average age of roster-26.0 years. Average amount of experience-3.1 years
2017 Average age of roster-26.1 years. Average amount of experience-3.3 years
2018 Average age of roster-26.0 years. Average amount of experience-3.1 years

As surprised as I was that the average age of the roster remains at a fairly constant 26 years of age, I figured that the amount of experience in the league would be a closer constant. Those back to back Super Bowl years really was a young, talented, hungry team. Perhaps more importantly, they were an up and coming team that hit their stride quicker than could have been anticipated.

I fully expected to see the 2018 roster to be as young and inexperienced as the 2013/14 rosters. Statistically they aren't that far off. I haven't done the math but I suspect that Brandon Marshalls and Sebastion Janakowskis 12 and 19 years respectively skew the age/experience factor somewhat.

I don't even know what any of this means in the grand scheme of things. Is it a reflection of the league averages across all teams? Is it part of Petes desire for roster churn? Is it evidence that those first few years of this era were extremely lucky in their draft hauls?

The 2018 roster has 5 players left over from the Super Bowl teams. They aren't kidding when they say the average NFL career is about 3 years.

 

[AgentDib]

I know I'm mostly alone on this but I've never really cared that much about the "LOB" moniker. I've been a fan of the team a long time before, will be a fan long after, and the "LOB" most people refer to included a bunch of different guys at the 2nd corner spot anyways.

Furthermore, I get why we tied so much money up into great secondary players but that took away what our FO has proven to do best. If there's an area on this team where we should have been saving money and trusting the coaching staff to find and develop new players it should be the secondary.

Even now with a tiny amount of salary invested in our active secondary players I feel OK about it going forwards. Flowers as a 5th round rookie safety starting at CB is playing about as good as you could hope for and Shaquill looks to be continuing to improve as an above average corner. Justin Coleman has been great as a nickel corner, McDougald has been one of the best players on defense, and Tedric Thompson shows a lot of potential.

Of course we can't really benefit from having a cheap secondary at the moment due to everything being tied up in dead money, but imagine if we had actually had that money to put into our o-line or d-line this season. This place would only be 50% pessimistic instead of 90% pessimistic.

 

[MontanaHawk05]

Every member of the secondary contributed to yesterday's win. Tre Flowers forced a fumble. Justin Coleman ended the Cards' last drive. Shaquill Griffin played well and also disrupted another of Dawson's field goals. And Bradley McDougald has been flying around making plays.

Free safety is the position I'm worried out, because we didn't have squat at that position last time Earl got hurt, and I don't think we do now, either.

 

[Grahamhawker]

Every member of the secondary contributed to yesterday's win. Tre Flowers forced a fumble. Justin Coleman ended the Cards' last drive. Shaquill Griffin played well and also disrupted another of Dawson's field goals. And Bradley McDougald has been flying around making plays.

Free safety is the position I'm worried out, because we didn't have squat at that position last time Earl got hurt, and I don't think we do now, either.

Tedrick Thompson has to be better than Steven Terrell, doesn't he...


...doesn't he? Cuz Terrell was worse than awful.

 

[Steve2222]

I never understood the big deal about how the Seahawks only have xx amount players left from their 2013 Super Bowl team. How many players do the Ravens have left from their 2012 team and the Patriots from the their 2014 team?

 

[Knuck Chox]

... As surprised as I was that the average age of the roster remains at a fairly constant 26 years of age, I figured that the amount of experience in the league would be a closer constant. ...

I'm not clear — did you compare the average age of the Seahawks' rosters with those of all the NFL teams? I'm also thinking ~26 years seems like it might be fairly consistent across the league.

 

[Heyseed]

LEGION OF BIRD

 

[A-Dog]

It's not necessarily the average age overall that's important

It's the age and salaries of the best players

In 2013 Russ, Doug, Bobby, KJ, Earl, Sherm, and Okung were all on their rookie contracts, and only Earl and Okung were getting decent money. The key veteran free agents (Bennett, Avril) were on prove-it deals. Percy Harvin was the one guy with a massive contract who was a fringe player.

The remaining guys on that list are now our highest paid players (plus Kam and Duane Brown).

We don't have that young cheap core that we did back then. The only guys I'd put in that category are Griffin, Clark, and maybe Reed. None of them are Pro-Bowl level yet and Clark is about to get his 2nd contract. Mid-tier guys like Britt and Lockett are already in to their 2nd contracts. We have very few players whose value greatly exceeds their pay. Justin Coleman is one but like Clark he'll get a decent payday after this season. Dissly and Carson could have been but injuries have gotten in the way.

Drafting just hasn't been good, and free agency has been even worse. The only good news is we have a lot of cap space starting next year, but if we start signing people we'll lose the 3rd round comp pick for Earl (and we completely blew it this offseason by losing out on comp picks).

 

[olyfan63]

Yup A-Dog, that was the story in 2013, a whole roster that dramatically, even ridiculously, outperformed their paycheck, including a 2nd year QB. Now we have a whole bunch of players who earn their pay and are fairly paid by NFL averages. Russell alone was a $15M savings we could use on overall team depth. Then guys started getting paid...