Cyril Grayson for Paul Richardson? Seahawks use practice squad additions as negotiating leverage

In the article announcing the promotion of Joey Hunt to the active roster of the Seattle Seahawks and the addition of Cyril Grayson to the practice squad earlier this week, I made note of the similarities between Grayson and Paul Richardson. Richardson is slated to be a free agent after this season, and I tossed out the idea that Grayson could be a player being used as leverage in any ongoing negotiations between Richardson and the team. I took some ribbing in the comments for suggesting that, in particular that an undrafted free agent who hasn’t played competitive football since high school could replace, or even compare, to former second round pick Paul Richardson.

And at this point in his development, it’s absolutely true that Grayson does not compare to Richardson, who has blossomed into a competent starting caliber NFL receiver. However, failing to recognize Grayson as a comparable and potential future replacement seems to fail to recognize a pattern of behavior by the front office pertaining to the team’s habit of signing comparable players to the practice squad in the weeks before a player is scheduled to hit free agency.

In the case of this most recent example, here are the measurements and combine/pro day results for both Grayson and Richardson, along with the date on which Grayson was added to the practice squad.

(Author’s note: For heights, the first number represents feet, numbers two and three represent inches and the fourth number represents eighths of an inch. So, for 6003, it is 6’00-3/8”. 5092 means 5’09-2/8”. This is the format used at the NFL combine, and for purposes of uniformity is the format used throughout this article.)

Now, those two are not perfect comparisons, but their profiles match up very similarly. And it’s not the first time the front office has added a very similarly profiled receiver to the practice squad in the weeks leading up to the end of a season. Thinking back, the last time Seattle lost a wide receiver in free agency is following the 2013 season when Golden Tate hit free agency.

Taking a look at Tate, here is a chart of his measurables next to the measurables of a wide receiver the Seahawks added to the practice squad on 12/5/2013, four years to the day prior to adding Grayson to the practice squad.

Looking at it further, here’s the other big free agent the team had in 2013 and the comparable player the team added to the practice squad.

Are either of those a perfect match? No, neither is one hundred percent identical across the board, but there are enough similarities between the two in each table that it could represent something. Or it could be nothing. Further digging may prove interesting, so on to the 2014 free agents.

The big free agents the team was looking at having in 2014 were Cliff Avril, K.J. Wright, Malcolm Smith and James Carpenter, and here’s a look at a comparable player to each of those who was added to the practice squad in the second half of November or in December.

These do not appear to match up nearly as well as the 2013 comparables, but there are enough similarities and my interest is still piqued, so I’m digging further. Moving ahead to 2015, the team had a long list of free agents including Bruce Irvin, Jeremy Lane, Brandon Mebane, Jermaine Kearse and J.R. Sweezy. Well, without wasting any time, here are the comps for each of those.

And at this point I don’t feel the need to do any more digging. None of them are perfect matches, but that is simply too many similar players added to the practice squad at the tail end of a season with one of the players on the 53 set to hit free agency to be a coincidence for my liking. Could it be? Sure, the Hawks churn through a lot of players on the practice squad, so it could simply be a result of randomness following this churn.

Alternatively, it could be that the team prefers players with specific measurables, and that results in what looks like a pattern when it’s actually simply the team following standard protocols. Or it could be a part of adding a comparable player to the practice squad as part of the negotiation process with an impending free agent. Or it could be preparing for the loss of an impending free agent. Whatever the actual reason, to me it seems too much of a pattern to be randomness.

Of course, sometimes what appears to be a pattern is nothing more than the randomness of a small sample size, and the sample size of the number of free agents the Seahawks would have considered extending over the past four years is relatively small at barely over a dozen players.

Interestingly, one player whose name is conspicuously absent from this list is Russell Okung. He is one of the few soon to be free agents for whom a comparable player was not added to the practice squad late during their free agency season. That could be the result of the fact that it’s hard enough to find offensive linemen, much less one who can do 38 reps on the bench, or it could be that the team had no intention of retaining Okung. Alternatively, the fact that Okung didn’t have an agent could have played a role as well. Whatever the reason, of the biggest free agents the team faced the prospect of losing over the last several years, he is the only one that did not have a comparable player added late during the season. Could be something, could be nothing.

In any case, it makes this something to keep an eye on as the team prepares for the start of the 2018 league year and the coming free agency period. Maybe it’ll prove to have been worth following and maybe it won’t. We’ll learn more between now and early March.