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Vikings thwart Seahawks’ plan to re-sign Tom Johnson

NFL: Seattle Seahawks at Minnesota Vikings Brad Rempel-USA TODAY Sports

The Seattle Seahawks pretty much signed Tom Johnson to be a cheaper replacement for Sheldon Richardson, who went to the Minnesota Vikings on a much more expensive one-year deal than Johnson’s.

Guess what? The Vikings now have Richardson and they brought Tom Johnson back.

You may recall that due to the numerous injuries the Seahawks have suffered, including to safety Delano Hill, they needed some bodies on special teams. This meant releasing their starting defensive tackle to make room for Shalom Luani. It was reported and then confirmed by Pete Carroll himself that they wanted to re-sign Tom this week, but he was the odd man out due to depth concerns.

Any guesses as to how many snaps Luani played on Monday night against the Chicago Bears?

At least Johnson won’t cost the Seahawks some salary cap money into 2019. Oh wait...

Congrats on the double dip, Tom!

This ranks comparatively low on my list of grievances with John Schneider and Pete Carroll, but they made a complete debacle out of this situation. They’ve made the defensive line depth worse, cost themselves some cap room, all of this for Luani to not even play at all.

If there’s any positive out of not getting Tom Johnson back, it’s that we’ll surely see more of Poona Ford on the field. He had 15 snaps to Nazair Jones’ 12. Johnson is 34 and a bit of a late bloomer, but he was a quality contributor on that Minnesota defense, and he’ll be back there once again. Hopefully Ford and Jones can step up and show themselves as the future of the Seahawks front.