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Micheal Bennett is leaving one Super Bowl team for another, it seems. ESPN’s Josina Anderson reports that Bennett has been traded from the Seattle Seahawks to the Philadelphia Eagles.
I'm told DE Michael Bennett is going to be traded to the Philadelphia #Eagles.
— Josina Anderson (@JosinaAnderson) March 7, 2018
The return is apparently underwhelming:
Here it goes: Seahawks are trading DE Michael Bennett and a seventh-round pick to Eagles for a fifth-round pick and WR Marcus Johnson, sources tell ESPN.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) March 7, 2018
Bennett re-joined the Seahawks on a one-year deal in 2013, helping elevate their defense and pass rush to a Super Bowl championship unit that season. Seattle re-signed him to a long-term deal following the win and they returned to the Super Bowl in 2014, but Bennett seemed to be the last “healthy” player left by the time the fourth quarter of that game against the New England Patriots came around.
He has spent the last five seasons with the Seahawks, the team that also signed him as an undrafted free agent out of Texas A&M in 2009, and signed an extension in December of 2016. The team saves just $2.2 million next season by trading him.
They move up from the seventh round to the fifth round and add Marcus Johnson, a 2016 UDFA out of Texas who had five catches for 45 yards in 2017. This would appear to be more about making changes and clearing house a bit under a new defensive coordinator (Ken Norton Jr) than it is about adding picks or saving money.
Rumors swirled around Richard Sherman earlier on Wednesday, with no concrete news on that front quite yet. But clearly Seattle is ready for change.