| 24 May 2010
Mike has already done a pretty good job of recapping Leroy Hill's legal troubles, but I'd like to add some pertinent information on his contract before I get into the subject of this article. Hill's six year deal is structured so that he can be cut without penalty to Seattle after just two years, but it's been only one year since the deal was signed so that part doesn't really matter. However, there have been some intimations recently that there is a clause in Hill's contract that allows the Seahawks to void it without penalty if he is suspended by the league, but not if that suspension is due to his marijuana bust in Georgia. Granted, Hill may end up being cut by the team this offseason no matter what, but if the NFL decides to suspend him because of his recent domestic violence arrest then Seattle would be able to release him without paying a dime.
* * *
As things stand now, there is a strong possibility that Leroy Hill's time in Seattle is over, so this seems like as good a time as any to take a long, hard look at his career with the team.
To continue reading, please click on "Read More" below.
To start this off, we need to remind ourselves what Seahawks football was like before Hill joined the team. That's right, we're taking a trip back to the early to mid 2000s, a hazy, far-off time when Walter Jones and Steve Hutchinson ruled the Earth (or at least the left side of it), Matthew Hasselbeck had slightly more hair, and Shaun Alexander put up points like a balky pinball machine.
But more relevant to the subject at hand, our linebacking corps (and the defense in general) was in sore need of an infusion of talent. Let me put it this way: if the team hadn't added any LB talent in the '05 draft, we could have looked forward to a starting lineup composed of some combination of D.D. Lewis, Isaiah Kacyvenski, Jamie Sharper, Kevin Bentley, and Niko Koutovides. None of those guys were truly awful players, per se, but as a whole they weren't an inspiring bunch. Bentley and Lewis were just fast enough to tackle ballcarriers after a modest gain instead of a large one, Sharper had just put in three good years in Houston but was nearing the end of his career, Kacyvenski was always a better story than a player1, and Koutovides was adequate but in no danger of becoming the next Ray Lewis.
Thankfully, the team did draft a couple of LBs that year, taking Lofa Tatupu in the mid-second round and Leroy Hill with a compensatory pick at the bottom of the third2. Looking back on the information we had at the time, Hill still looks like a pretty solid pick. He was a highly productive middle linebacker at Clemson, as in productive enough to be nominated for the Butkus Award his senior year. He never flashed the leadership skills needed to be a middle linebacker at the pro level, but he looked like a solid prospect as an outside linebacker.
Hill's NFLDraftScout.com write-up3 praises his quickness and ability to hit hard and disrupt plays in the backfield, and it asserts that he showed enough improvement in pass coverage throughout his time at Clemson to be a possible candidate for conversion to safety (uh, yeah -- anyone remember Boulware?). It also cautions that he would likely have trouble fighting his way through blocks and negotiating traffic at the NFL level. All in all, a reasonably solid draft candidate with the sort of mild question marks you'd expect from someone who's still available at the bottom of the third round.
Midway through his rookie season, Hill was thrust into the starting lineup at left outside linebacker when Jamie Sharper went down with what turned out to be a career-ending knee injury. Hill quickly proved how much guesswork goes into pre-draft projections by slicing his way through would-be blockers and deftly threading his way through traffic to do terrible things to offensive players in the backfield, averaging a sack per game in his first five starts and generally making himself a nuisance to the quarterback. His time as a sack machine was short-lived, however; from week fourteen to the Super Bowl, he only managed another half sack, but in all other respects continued to hit ballcarriers hard and show off his quickness.
If Hill had kept his sack production up, the Seahawks may not have been quite so tempted to pay through the nose for an aging pass-rushing free agent like Julian Peterson during the following offseason. That kind of speculation is ultimately moot, though, because he didn't and they did. Consequently, Hill found himself taken off pass-rush duty in '06 and used more in coverage against tight ends and running backs. NFL Draft Scout's write-up was right when it said that he had the raw physical gifts to be a good coverage linebacker, but he soon proved that talent doesn't mean much if you don't know how to go about covering a receiver.
In '06 Hill was still quick enough to stop running plays for minimal gain, still the best pure tackler on the roster, and still hit hard enough to make grown men cry, but tight ends caught an awful lot of passes in his zone. In light of that, Seattle's selection of Will Herring in the fifth round of the 2007 draft seems pretty logical. Herring at that time was a developmental linebacking prospect who had played safety through most of his college career, but provided he could develop a little more muscle and a taste for hitting guys like a linebacker should, he would be an ideal player to sub in for Hill on passing downs.
To Hill's credit, as '07 wore on his coverage skills improved noticeably -- not enough to shut tight ends down, perhaps, but good enough that he wasn't quite the hot mess in a zone defense that he was in '06. Julian Peterson was still the go-to guy for rushing the passer, so Hill didn't get many opportunities there, but he gave every appearance that he was finally growing into his new coverage-oriented role.
Unfortunately, Hill had also proven he had a distinct tendency to develop nagging injuries, most likely as a side effect of all those punishing hits he dealt out. He missed just one game in '05, another in '06, and two in '07. In 2008, his injuries cost him four games. But despite missing one fourth of the regular season, Hill still managed to produce at a reasonably high level, notching 84 tackles in the twelve games he played, up from the 81 he registered in the fourteen games he played the previous season. But with Tatupu playing hurt most of '08 and and Peterson blitzing on every other down to bolster Seattle's anemic pass rush, Hill had to work double-time to pick up the slack and in the process succeeded in injuring himself that much faster.
Leroy's coverage skills also seemed to plateau in '08. It's entirely possible that his lack of progress in that vein was a byproduct of his injuries and having to cover more territory than usual, but even at the beginning of the season he looked like he had reached the limit of his capabilities. But while Hill's coverage skills didn't progress any, they didn't regress, either, and combined with his usual bone-crushing, sure-tackling play in every other aspect of linebackery4 he managed to string together a decent enough season to warrant being slapped with a franchise tag. Yes, he was hurt more often, but at the close of the 2008 season Hill's future with the team still looked bright.
Which brings us to 2009, the year Hill really went down the tubes. After kicking things off in January with a marijuana bust in his home state of Georgia and holding out until after the draft to sign a contract replete with escape hatches for Seattle, Hill went on to play his worst season ever as a Seahawk, registering a career low 46 tackles while missing a career high five games. To put those numbers in perspective, Will Herring also had 46 tackles, but only had six starts that year to Hill's eleven.
In even worse news for Hill, '09 was also the year that showed us what David Hawthorne and all his attendant badassery could accomplish when given a shot at a starting job: 117 tackles, five passes defended, four sacks, three interceptions, and two forced fumbles in eleven starts (refresh my memory, who else had eleven starts that season?). 2009 also gave us first round pick Aaron Curry, a natural strong-side linebacker whose skill set I would describe as "like Leroy Hill's, but with more quickness, pain, and awesome." Curry's production in his rookie season left a lot to be desired, but the defensive scheme and the coaching he received did too, so I'm willing to give him a mulligan on the year. I expect a young, studious, talented player like him to thrive under the tutelage of Pete Carroll and Ken Norton, Jr.
So then, how do you follow up a year in which you post the worst single season performance of your career, continue your downward trend of missing more starts each year to injury, and no less than three viable candidates emerge to challenge you for the two starting outside linebacker positons? Well, if you're Hill you get arrested on DV charges a little over a week after being granted probation by the prosecutor's office in Georgia, thereby giving your team no choice but to tell you to stay away from the offseason program until the situation is resolved. Not a good move.
Now, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that Hill has only been charged with domestic violence, and as such is innocent until proven guilty. Hill is in no danger of becoming the next Michael Vick or Rae Carruth. However, two widely publicized arrests in back to back offseasons are not going to endear you to any team, especially when you couple that with an injury history like Hill's.
But even before his most recent arrest things were not looking good for Hill's long term future with the team. Aaron Curry is a natural fit for Hill's strong-side position, and his athleticism and huge contract will ensure he becomes the starter there. Tatupu is going to be the starting middle linebacker, and Hawthorne has been penciled in by the team as the starter on the weak side. So unless the team was planning on creating another starting linebacker position by switching to a 3-4 alignment, Hill was already most likely looking at jockeying for position with Will Herring to be top dog on the backup roster. Teams aren't in the habit of paying players six million a year to warm the bench.
Yes, Hill was a disappointment last year, and yes, he'll probably be spending 2010 playing somewhere else. But if the Seahawks had the 2005 draft to do over again, I'd still want them to pick Leroy Hill. Overall, he has been a good, sometimes great linebacker for Seattle, and despite his problems in coverage, his ability to diagnose run plays and intimidate ballcarriers has greatly benefited the team. Like Kenny Easley before him, Hill's hard-hitting style has proven to be both his best asset and greatest drawback, increasing his value as a player while simultaneously shortening his viable playing career. So while I wouldn't be too broken up to see the Hill we got in '09 move on to another team, I'm still happy we had Hills '05-'08 on our side. Whatever his future in Seattle, I wish Leroy Hill luck and I hope he succeeds in overcoming and learning from his personal and legal troubles5.
1 If you aren't familiar with Kacyvenski's story, take a look at the bio segment NFL Films did on him for the Seahawks' 2005 season DVD.
2 They also took Cornelius Wortham in the seventh round, but he didn't make much of an impact.
3 It's times like this when I really hate the way information is treated online. I was only able to find this information saved in two places: an old USA Today webpage and a post on a Dallas Cowboys forum. Would it really be so hard for NFL Draft Scout to archive all this information somewhere instead of deleting it all as soon as the next draft rolls around?
4 Not a real word, but it should be.
5 I always figure a player isn't a lost cause until he gives up on life and joins the Cincinnati Bengals.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
