A reported agreed to deal between the Seattle Seahawks and former Detroit Lions cornerback Terrion Arnold finally became official ahead of roster cuts. The expected follow-up came quickly, as Arnold will be placed on the Commissioner's Exempt List as soon as the contract is received by the league office.
Arnold's time on the exempt list is attached to how long it takes for his legal situation to play out. He is facing eight felony charges, and the possibility of significant prison time, for his alleged role in a kidnapping and robbery scheme in Florida early in the offseason.
The Seahawks, operating with the equity that comes with being the defending champions, are willing to pay Arnold not to play in order to have him available only to them when he is able to play. If he is able to play, actually, but there was reported competition for the former first-round pick despite his current predicament.
Based on how most of his two seasons with the Lions went, "former first-round pick" is doing a lot of work to bolster Arnold's football-playing prospects. If what he had shown to this point was worth the trouble, the Lions probably would've kept him.
That being said, several felony charges represents a line of demarcation when it comes to off-field trouble. On "Hard Knocks", Seahawks general manager John Schneider openly acknowledged if Arnold had been on the team at the time of his arrest, he probably would've been cut.
John Schneider is trying to talk himself into Terrion Arnold
On Sunday, when Schneider spoke to the media, the official signing of Arnold was an obvious topic. Via KOMO News, here's what he said.
"There is a ton of different factors that went into it,” Schneider said “Obviously, the legal stuff has to take care of itself, and we totally respect that. There are tons of different buckets to this situation. Just the advocates that we had, you know."
After an odd call back to trading for Leon Washington in his first year as Seahawks' general manager, in light of Washington's relationship with Arnold ("he's basically like his father"), Schneider moved back to actually talking about Arnold.
"The character just didn’t really fit with the allegations and everybody we’ve talked to. But yes, there’s a long-term play. This isn’t a, ‘Let’s see how quickly we can get this done.’ Let’s get him in the building and see how it goes.”
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So the Seahawks apparently talked to a former Seahawk Schneider described as "like Arnold's father." Further vetting surely included Arnold's college coach, Nick Saban, who literally wrote a letter to the judge in Florida vouching for the character of his former player.
A fully objective perspective can be hard to find when someone finds themselves in trouble. But it probably isn't coming from two men who would likely call themselves father figures to Arnold. Did Schneider or anyone else attached to the Seahawks attempt to talk to anyone with the Lions, to get a fresher perspective about him --good or bad?
Very few teams could've signed Arnold without getting a lot of scrutiny regarding whether the current trouble will be worth it or not. The Seahawks are in a position where they can take the risk, and Schneider is clearly operating within that "no harm, no foul" position to talk himself into Arnold eventually delivering anything of note for his team.
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