RENTON — The Seattle Seahawks sent away two veteran wide receivers with a combined 15 seasons of NFL experience, Marquez Valdes-Scantling and Steven Sims, as part of setting the team’s 53-man roster on Tuesday for the upcoming regular season.
The team will eat the $3 million it guaranteed Valdes-Scantling, 30, in the one-year contract Seattle gave him this spring. He got beat out by rookie fifth-round draft choice Tory Horton, plus Dareke Young and Cody White.
Sims went on injured reserve. It is season-ending unless the Seahawks reach an injury settlement with him to make him a free agent.
Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald rewarded Young and White for their impressive training camps and preseason games.
White, signed after Pittsburgh released him in the summer of 2023, spent most of last season on Seattle’s practice squad. He got the final of six wide-receiver spots at the start of this season by producing in every opportunity he got, including as a punt returner.
He had two catches for 44 yards in his only three targets of the 2024 season last Nov. 3 in Seattle’s overtime home loss to the Los Angeles Rams. He had a big second half receiving and returning in Green Bay Saturday in the preseason finale.
Macdonald praised White for that Saturday after the final preseason game.
“Give him the opportunity, and he makes plays,” Macdonald said. “I’m happy for him. We’ve talked about it for two years now. The guy worked extremely hard. He earned that (big game in Green Bay). That was really cool.”
Seattle made one trade among its roster moves Tuesday. The team sent reserve offensive tackle Mike Jerrell to the Atlanta Falcons for a conditional seventh-round draft choice.
The Seahawks waived two rookie draft choices: running back Damien Martinez from Oregon State and wide receiver Ricky White from UNLV. Both were seventh-round picks this spring.
Seattle put guard Christian Haynes (pectoral) on injured reserve with a designation to return after a minimum of four weeks missed during the season.
Other mild surprises: The team kept undrafted rookie linebackers Jared Ivey and Connor O’Toole while releasing 2022 fifth-round pick Tyreke Smith and Patrick O’Connell. O’Connell was starting at weakside inside linebacker at times during training camp, when regular Tyrice Knight was out with an undisclosed medical issue.
Knight is back practicing for the opening game Sept. 7 against San Francisco at Lumen Field.
The Seahawks waived Quinton Bohanna and Brandon Pili. Both had been on the starting defensive line during training camp. Veteran Johnathan Hankins, 33, remains on the reserve/non-football-injury list with a back issue. He hasn’t practiced since last season.
Those moves leave Seattle wafer thin at defensive tackle. Byron Murphy and Jarran Reed are the only two on the 53-man roster. Rookie defensive end Rylie Mills, the fifth-round pick from Notre Dame, is also on the non-football-injury list. That’s from the reconstructive knee surgery he had in January.
For all the consideration of losing players the Seahawks want to keep on the practice squad to waiver claims, consider: There were only 24 in the entire, 32-team league from roster cut-down day last summer.
That’s why Macdonald and general manager John Schneider consider theirs a 70-man roster, not 53, for the regular season. He intends for most if not all the 17-man practice squad to come from the players Seattle had in training camp and just waived. Defensive tackle is likely to be a position back-filled by practice-squad signings.
“John said this, and I love how we do it here,” Macdonald said. “We’re looking at it through the lens of, ‘Hey, this is the 70, this is not the final 53. We need everybody in our building … .This is the crew that we’re building for the long haul.’ ”
The league waiver period is less than 24 hours, ending early Wednesday. The Seahawks and all other teams will sign back players who are not claimed off waivers to the practice squad after that.