Seahawks Release LenDale White

he must have done something off of the field or butted heads with coaches or teammates in the locker room to get the axe before training camp.

Unless you are saying talent is fluid potential, and to “put it all together” and consistently dominate is your metaphorical hardness, I’m guessing your spell-checker had a Freudian slip.

I don’t know about that, until Forsett steps up and shows he can do it full time. Maybe he can, but I felt a lot better when LenDale was a Hawk and we thought he was good. Forsett’s promise this year appears similar to Clemons’, in that he has done well as a situational player, albeit more recently.

I’m glad to finally hear something about Vickerson. Let’s hope P.C. lights a fire under him.

and I hope he he does great, but you’re not a proven starter until you prove yourself as a starter, every week. Julius Jones had some monster games when he was a rookie, but he never made it as a dependable regular. Forsett’s ability as a starter is unknown.

Or did you include what you were writing in this piece?

Haven’t spoken to you all in a while, and I realize I seem to be a harbinger of disagreement on here, but I wanted to see the FG reaction to Lendale’s release and i felt compelled to comment. I’m surprised personally, but my guess is that Mr. White cannot keep his weight in check and (perhaps these two are tied together) he apparently failed a drug test, so I guess it’s not too surprising.

Anyway, I disagree with John’s notion that Julius Jones and Justin Forsett are good backs, or at least that Jones is. The interesting thing to me is that John is so critical of Lendale White here in this article, yet White has actually outperformed Jones throughout his career. His DVOA was higher than Jones’ in each of the last 3 years, and his success rate, which John singled out in the article, has been equal to or higher than Jones’ for each of the last three seasons (In 2006, the only other year where both backs were in the NFL, Jones had a higher DVOA and success rate than White, although White only had 62 carries).

Now some may point to White’s offensive line as the reason for that disparity, and it’s a fair point, although playing behind a poor line is not a complete death sentence for a back (as an actual “good back” like Frank Gore showed last year playing behind the Niners awful line, or like Jamaal Charles or even Justin Forsett, who played very well last year with the same talent as Jones). It’s also instructive to point out that Jones not only wasn’t productive last year he’s NEVER been productive. He’s never ranked higher than 22nd in DVOA in his entire career and only once has ranked above 32nd in success rate (he’s also only had a positve DVOA once, and that was only 2.0%). He’s also been destroyed performance-wise by other backs on teams he has played on (by Forsett in 2009 and by Marion Barber when he was with Dallas). I just don’t see how one could justify saying anything other than Jones is at or near replacement level, he’s been only marginal or worse in the NFL, on teams of varying degrees of talent, and while other backs have thrived on the same teams. I’d bet you could get maybe a 7th rounder for him right now in trade, so it should be obvious a “good” back would be worth much more than that, however you want to define it (and, as some of you know, we don’t need to delve into that).

Justin Forsett is obviously a different beast. He truly was very productive last year, and if he sustains anything similiar to that level of production I think he’s pretty obviously a good back. The question is whether he can sustain it, something I have no idea of. I still think you have to be wary that he will follow the path of Steve Slaton or Jerious Norwood, guys who had extreme success in small samples but (so far at least) have not been able to build further upon that). We shall see, but for now I would stick with “a player who has the potential to be very good” until we see further, he’s certainly no sure thing.

As for evaluating the Seattle backs as a unit, I think again there is a disagreement because of the (seemingly large) disparity in our evaluation on Jones, and to a lesser extent Forsett. I certainly wouldn’t call the Seattle backfield good, in fact I think I’d call it weak until I saw that Leon Washington was back to form and/or Forsett proves himself with more carries. For instance, as of now I think Seattle would rank quite clearly last in the NFC West when ranking thwe four team’s backfields. I also think there are few teams in the NFL that have a backfield that’s clearly in worse shape than Seattle’s and I wouldn’t be surprised if you guys picked a running back with a high pick in next year’s draft. But, as always, these are only my personal opinions and any and all feeback is welcome and appreciated. I somehow manage to lose myself when talking about football and end up writing for much longer than I planned to when I started, but hopefully I got my point across civilly and added something thought provoking to the conversation. I did try at least. :-)

When both Anthony Dixon and Jonathon Dwyer were still on the board when the Seahawks went after White, I can’t help but wonder what the hell convinced them that White was in a position to contribute. Did they not know that a suspension was likely? Did they not ask? Was this much like the Whitehurst trade another rookie mistake? As a bit of advice to Pete stop taking people with White in their last name unless they play like Reggie.

Anyone who thinks that Seattle’s Running backs are fine as they are, either share what you are smoking or put it down.

As for Whitehurst you are right we haven’t seen him play… WHICH IS THE PROBLEM! He has Zero experience and we gave up a ton to get a guy with ZERO experience, we may as well taken a rookie.Take off the rose glasses that allows you to see the perfection in everything that Pete or the FO does, as this clearly was a reach and the FO even admitted as much. furthermore, I’d be surprised if Losman doesn’t move ahead of him on the depth chart.