It seems safe to project that Seahawks LB Mychal Kendricks will be on the field in 2019

Monday I took a look at how big a week it is for Seattle Seahawks linebacker Mychal Kendricks with one of his fellow co-conspirators set to appear in court Tuesday. Well, that hearing came and went and Mark Wayne Ramsey, the third person charged in the insider trading scheme became the first of the three parties to not enter a plea of guilty.

In court Tuesday, Ramsey entered pleas of not guilty to all five felony charges he faces in the case, including four counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud. Then almost as soon as the guilty plea had been entered and I posted a piece here on why a quiet Monday was good news for Kendricks and Damilare Sonoiki, Sonoiki’s sentencing hearing which had been scheduled for later this month was postponed yet again.

So, with Sonoiki’s sentencing hearing pushed back to the Monday after Week 4 of the 2019 season, and no date currently set for Kendricks to be sentenced, it most certainly appears that the Hawks defense will have a corps of linebackers made up of Bobby Wagner, K.J. Wright and Mychal Kendricks. That is not just the best linebacker trio in the the NFC West, it’s arguably the best trio of linebackers across the NFL, and if they can all stay healthy, the run defense for the Seahawks should certainly be improved over 2018.

In any case, if Ramsey is to proceed to trial and Kendricks is to appear as a witness against his childhood friend, it seems probably that Kendricks will remain free for the foreseeable future. As anyone with anything related to the legal system, trials do not happen quickly and this process could drag on for months, possibly even years. In any case, while the sentence that will be handed down to Kendricks remains unknown, every update that comes along seems to indicate stronger and stronger that he will, at a minimum, be available to the Hawks in 2019.