Do I have to settle on one? How about I rank them:
1. Add an impact player. At this point, I don't really care where. Seattle has gone 2 years without anything new to show for their efforts. We did manage to hold onto much of our talent. Which was a big win. But the new additions are still a bit underwhelming. We have a LOT of expensive talent on the roster that will need to be plowed under from a cap perspective. Getting replacements for some of those players has to factor in this year and next. I'd much rather get a player who will allow us to reload, rather than get a dud player for a position of perceived need. This is a team that has been a top 4 in the NFL type squad for 3 years running. Need is very relative when you're a team that is founded on being deep with a breadth of talent.
2. Roll over some of the mundane/talents now approaching second deals. 2015 is an easy year on the cap. 2016 is going to be a blood letting. We need to replace players/salaries that are rather painlessly cut with some cheaper rookie talent. Kearse was great as an undrafted/cheap player. He's not so attractive at 2.5m per year. Carpenter is maligned, although I think he's above average. But his position is one that you can live with a lesser talent. Spending 3m a year to keep an arguably slightly above average guy is excessive.
3. Continued development of the 2013/14 class. Lots of guys are going to need to make that next leap. Jordan Hill. Norwood. Marsh. Simon. Bailey. KPL. These are guys that need to take that next step. Doing so means 2016 looks much easier to stomach.
4. Improve either 3rd down offense or pass rush. We suffered mightily with the loss of Clinton McDonald to start the year. Jordan Hill really emerged as a very quality pass rusher when paired with a dominant rusher (Bennett). When Hill went down, our pass rush basically evaporated immediately. Seattle needs to be in a position to overcome the random injury. Marsh could help in this regard. But ultimately, Seattle suffered because our DL rotation went from 6-8 deep to 5-6 deep. Bennett and Avril both are more effective if they can be spelled. But their snaps grew enormously -- even before injuries beset the corps. We probably need one good pass rusher and one or two depth players who can take the load off Avril and Bennett and reserve them for impact downs.
Our 3rd down offense was not very good. It was pretty average really. I've done a pretty exhaustive study on 3rd down efficacy and how it relates to our success. We basically teetered on the 11 year average of the NFL in terms of conversion rates per down. But we suffered significantly on 3rd and long situations comparatively to the league average. What's worse, is that 54% of all our third downs were 3rd and 7 or more. Which is significantly more than the league average. So Seattle really lost the money down.
What stings more, is that while Seattle had a 42% rate of scoring per drive. In drives where we converted at least one third down saw our scoring rate balloon to 60%.
Seattle was above the average for converting 3rd and short (1,2 or 3) as one would expect. But merely 26% of the 3rd downs we faced were of this variety. Nearly 3/4s of our 3rd downs were distances where we were at or below the average for all NFL teams dating back to 2000.
Obviously there are multiple ways to improve our 3rd down offense. Right now, we don't have a quality chain mover player who can reliably get first down receptions in the 5-10 yard range. Getting a quality TE to work the middle or a quality WR who can either get open quickly or make tough/contested catches would work. I tend to think that Seattle is never going to utilize a player who can body/block out space to create catch opportunities to the fullest. We are overly careful with the ball and I don't see Russell throwing into coverage and letting his WR do his thing. I'm just not hopeful that getting a big red zone type target will have the kind of impact for us, that they might for a team that takes more risks with the ball.
We take a lot of sacks. Whether that's by bad pass pro or by Wilson's style. We take a lot of them. And when we do, they really kill our drives. When we take a sack on first or second down, our conversion rate for that series is less than the league average for converting a 3rd down and 15. It's around 16%. The league average for converting 3rd and 15 is 19%.
If we're talking need, then I'd have to go with either a first down producer or better protection. Improving your 3rd down conversion ability improves the scoring by 50% over the overall average. We had an ok scoring rate, despite having the luxury of the shortest average starting field position on scoring drives in the league. We did less with more.
