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While many Seattle Seahawks fans try as hard as they can to forget the pain of losing Super Bowl 49, there has been no shortage of welcoming back once-again Seahawk Byron Maxwell, for whom that crushing defeat to the Patriots was his last game with the Seahawks.
With Richard Sherman rupturing his Achilles in the Thursday night game against the Arizona Cardinals and DeShawn Shead appearing less and less likely to return this season from ACL surgery, Seattle on Monday signed Maxwell to fill out the roster to its typical amount of five cornerbacks.
Where Maxwell will fit in the depth chart and how quickly he might come in and take over a starting role obviously remains to be seen. Maxwell came up with the Seahawks after being drafted in the sixth round of the 2011 draft, leaving for the (literally) greener pastures of the Philadelphia Eagles, to the tune of $63M. In his four years in Seattle, Maxwell earned a total of $2,153,452, while over the last 32 months he has made in excess of $30M from the Eagles and Miami Dolphins.
As such, this signing appears to be less about immediate money and more about giving a soon-to-be 30-year-old cornerback one last chance to showcase himself for another big contract in free agency in the spring. Seattle already received one third round comp pick in the 2016 draft following Maxwell’s 2015 departure from the Pacific Northwest (Rees Odhiambo says thanks!), and it is entirely possible that Maxwell could sign with another team as a free agent next spring, potentially earning the Seahawks yet another compensatory pick in the 2019 draft.
Before I get too far ahead of myself, for those fans who have drank, smoked or repressed their memories of pre-XLIX Seahawks football into the deep recesses of their mind, here is a video of just a few of Maxwell’s many highlights from his first tour of duty in Seattle. A big thanks to the Philadelphia fan who put this together because now I don’t even have to do any work to assemble his Seahawks highlights!