As the Seattle Seahawks’ season came to a close on Sunday after their loss to the Green Bay Packers in the NFC Divisional Round of the playoffs, the focus on 2020 quickly came into play as the team looks to regroup for another run next season.
Seahawks’ defensive end Jadeveon Clowney is one player that will get a lot of attention from the team, and others, as he prepares to enter the free agent market. Clowney has made it clear that he intends to sign with, and play for, a contender.
“I just want to win,” Clowney said, according to ESPN’s Brady Henderson. “I’m trying to get to the Super Bowl by any means. That’s what I’m looking for: Who’s going to get me there? I ain’t looking to get on no sorry team for no money. That ain’t going to fly. I ain’t gonna put my body through all of that just to lose no 16 games, go home with my check. I’d hate that, so that ain’t what I’m doing. So if I can’t win no Super Bowl, I ain’t going to no team that can’t win.”
But, free agency won’t be Clowney’s only order of business. Clowney will also have to to determine if he’ll have surgery on the core-muscle injury he has dealt with, and played through, since Week 10. Clowney decided to put off surgery after a November visit to Dr. William Meyers, a core-muscle specialist based in Philadelphia.
“I even don’t know if I showed anything,” Clowney said. “I just want to show it to my team. I don’t care about what anybody else sees. These guys in the locker room know what I was dealing with. They knew that I was going to get to Sunday and let it all hang out, and that’s what they asked for.
“They tell me every week: ‘Thank you for not quitting on us and not giving up.’ I said, ‘Y’all ain’t never got to worry about that with me.’ If I can go, I’m going to go. That’s what it is. If I was able to go the rest of the season, fight for them, I was going to fight for them.”
Clowney did not dismiss the idea of returning to the Seahawks, who acquired him earlier in the season via a trade with the Houston Texans. “It’s been great,” Clowney said of his time with the team.
“It’s been great. Great experience. I met a great group of guys. I just told them, ‘I appreciate everyone in this locker room because I didn’t know how it was going to go when I got to Seattle’ … so I walked in laughing and giggling. They’ve been accepting me ever since. I think it was a good experience.”