We have some shocking news that Connor Williams, the starting
Center for the Seattle Seahawks, has retired mid season.
There's some weird stuff going on this week in Seattle.
Yeah, 27 years old.
Not really expecting this news on.
Oh, by the way, on Sammy's birthday.
Happy birthday to you, bro.
Thank you.
Thank you for your birthday.
Connor Williams retired and gave you more Seahawk headaches.
So happy birthday to you.
Oh, yeah, thank you.
A rough Seahawks week, though.
27 years old.
He is younger than I am now.
And there's a it's just weird to see and especially
considering the fact that Mike McDonald said it is not
related to his knee injury.
So first of all, I wish him, you know, the
best.
It said they said personal manner, like sometimes you don't
know what's going on in someone's life or their family
life.
I'm hoping it's just a personal manner like Andrew Luck
saying he's done right rather than obviously, hopefully nothing's wrong
with his family.
So wishing him the best there.
I don't want to, you know, crap on the guy
for retiring at 27 if something actually is going on
in his personal life.
So, you know, hope out there that it's nothing serious,
but it is crazy news in a week where it's
been kind of crazy for the Seahawks, man, we released
Terrell Dotson.
We talked about it last episode.
So many changes for the Seahawks and then for him
to retire mid season is a weird report.
Not something that you would expect and not something that
we expect to Seahawks fans.
No, not something we expect.
But yeah, I've kind of come on to the point
like, yeah, you can't.
Especially a game like football where there's so many injuries,
so much wear and tear, so many hits, so many
people get CTEI can never, ever, ever blame a guy
who got his money, made his good amount of money
in his life and is like, you know what?
Maybe my personal, maybe I have no idea what his
personal reason is, but his personal reason could be as
simple as I want to live a long, healthy life
and can't shame him for that.
Yeah.
And that, that's why, you know, I'm saying I don't
know the reason that he's made $24 million in his
career.
He's probably fine.
If he doesn't spend like crazy, he's probably living a
good life.
And, you know, they say it's not related to the
knee injury, but like you said, it could be related
to other health things.
Right.
Like, I want to be healthy.
Andrew Luck, his was not related to a specific injury,
but he was tired of getting hurt in a ruptured
spleen or a broken rib in a punctured lung and
this and that and that.
He was probably just tired of all the injuries.
That's a possibility.
And there's a possibility something happened to his family, but
we don't know.
So I'm not going to assume anything.
But it is a it's a blow.
It's a blow for the Seahawks.
Yeah, I saw someone on Twitter said I really was
hoping Connor Williams would stop snapping the ball over Geno
Smith's head, but not in this way.
Yeah, for real.
For real.
Not in this way.
I mean, it's it's a sad or a weird way
to go out, I guess.
Not sad.
It just depends what happens.
You know, it's hard to react to these sometimes, George,
considering the fact that you have no idea what happened.
Yeah, I know.
Like.
Yeah, the reaction.
And it's not like, you know, if this is not
our quarterback retiring in the middle of the season, you
can't say so much more about that.
But in general, like this is it is a blow,
right?
We finally got Abraham Lucas back.
You're like, OK, maybe the offensive line can sure up
a little bit.
And then now we lose our starting center.
And it's like, all right.
And I do want to say we do have the
guy from Michigan who you pronounced his name absolutely perfect
on our YouTube, our TikTok short and Instagram Reel.
So I wanted to just shout you out for that
pronunciation, bro.
Well, I could have messed up something 'cause it's a
loose aguna lua tumi or alua timi.
And I'm not 100% sure, but I but I remember
when we drafted him out of Michigan, I spent a
lot of time researching it.
So I don't get made fun of on videos, but
it's either a loose aguna lua tumi or a loose
aguna lua timi.
But either.
Did you imagine me trying to say that?
Yeah, you would have been like Ala Sagani, Ala Tami.
I mean to to me, I mean to Tom.
And I'd be like, George, just let me say it.
That's why I like, even when we put out videos
about Jackson Smith and Jigba, I always just say JSN.
Yeah, JSNZI can say it, but like, I struggle with
pronunciations of people's names for some reason.
You get the tongue twisters going.
But I'm going to rock the intro, George, even though
it's midway through here.
But I just, I want to hit it so I
don't have to edit, edit this after and get it
out to the people fast.
And then I'm going to say something about you talking
about the offensive line finally getting showed up.
You're listening to the Sports on Tap Seattle podcast.
I'm Sammy.
And with me, as always, is my older brother George.
Your favorite place to be a fan of Seattle sports.
Now let's get this party start.
No party today.
Well, actually, maybe I'm going to I'm going to have
a few drinks and have for my birthday.
Sammy didn't want to have a birthday party this year.
Believe it or not, guys, I'm getting married in nine
days.
So I got enough partying going on in Mexico next
weekend.
So I think I'm just going to I was just
passing on this year's extra is the beard have anything
to getting married like you, you have a nice long
beard, but this one, this is epic.
This is one of your best works.
It's one of my worst works.
It is being trimmed on Tuesday before I fly to
Mexico because I'm just trying to trying to grow it
out for the for the Barber to have a good,
good something to work with.
You know, nice little I I trimmed mine yesterday, figured
that mine will grow by Tuesday when we go get
our beards trimmed so then they can retrim it up
for me.
It's pretty short.
I don't know.
You should have just waited for the Barber.
You know, the problem with mine is right now, let's
see if you can guess.
I have no guess.
I'm sorry.
All right, I am.
So if you guys have watched this before, you probably
or even looking at us right now, you guys can
probably figure out we're related.
We're brothers.
Some people think we're twins, but we're not.
I mean, the hint show just said we're brothers.
So yeah, so we're brothers.
And you can't see it now 'cause I trim my
beard, but my beard grows long.
I get the Gray hairs everywhere on my chin.
So I have to trim it like any longer.
I was like, I was looking like salt and pepper,
George Clooney type of stuff going on there.
So I had to trim it up.
You're not retiring though, like Connor Williams is.
No, I'm not actually.
Unfortunately, you haven't made $24 million in like a five
year span yet.
I think at 24,000,000, like whatever I'm doing, I'm probably
hanging up most of my hard work.
Hard work, Yeah, I'll still do something, but not.
I'll still do something, but not that hard.
Well, he retired 27 and it puts the Seahawks offensive
line in an interesting spot, George.
I mean, they've dealt with no Abraham Lucas all year.
George fan's been on the IR, Abe Lucas comes back
finally.
Who knows how healthy it'll be.
It's been a whirlwind cycle of him being unhealthy.
And just like that, you get the news.
DK Metcalf's back.
Abraham Lucas is back.
Oh, the Seahawks injury report looks pretty clean and it's
like, oh, Connor Williams out for personal reasons like that's
unfortunate.
We'll get some elusive goon this week and then it's
like just kidding.
Mike McDonald at the podium says he retires for personal
reasons not related to his knee and they do not
expect him to change his mind this season.
Now we've I've seen a, a a plethora of reactions
on social media, including that's messed up to quit on
your team mid season.
I've seen I hope everything's OK.
I've seen everything.
Now there is something weird.
I'm not going to assume, but let's just assume it's,
I want to hang it up, right?
Not it's not a family.
You know, something's wrong with the family or he's something's
wrong with him.
Let's just assume like tired of getting hurt, whatever.
There's been some weirdness on the Seahawks team.
They've given up on Jerome Baker, who seemed to be
also giving up on the team himself, and Terrell Dotson
seemed to be happy to be released.
He was over it and now Connor Williams is like,
it's not worth it this year, let's retire.
So if it's not a serious personal reason, it has
been a weird season where we've talked about the Mike
McDonald, new coaching staff, whatever.
I'm not trying to assume anything.
I know you could get some hate for this this
comment, but like, are people quitting on the team?
Is this team not that interesting to to players?
I don't know.
Something weird's going on in Seattle these last couple weeks.
Yeah, like I said, we don't want to assume anything.
I've kind of been on Twitter ridiculed for saying I
said one bad thing about Mike McDonald once and I
got so much hate because that's what we do as
fans like you protect the team under all costs type
of thing.
But it does feel like there is some disconnect maybe.
Well, that's OK.
Sometimes you just need your guys.
You know what I mean?
Bill Belichick had guys quit on him.
Bill Belichick had guys leave them.
Bill Belichick had guys who hated them.
I'm not saying Connor Williams hates Mike McDonald or anyone
like or any of those guys hate them.
But until you get your right guys and the guys
that actually care for you.
I know Connor Williams signed with the Seahawks this offseason,
so did Totson and Baker.
All three of those examples are guys that we brought
in.
But it's OK.
Like I'm not going to jump off the ship here,
say it's like 100% something to do with Mike McDonald
or the coaching staff, but I'm going to say it's
something to monitor.
We can monitor it.
Yeah.
That's all I'm saying too, is I don't know.
The vibes are not as expected is a good way
to put it, right?
The vibes of maybe we put this new team together,
we got new linebackers, we got a new offensive lineman.
We picked up these things.
Those are three players, Jerome Baker, Terrell Dotson and Conor
Williams, that were not part of the Seahawks culture last
year.
These are all three brand new players.
All three of them are gone.
Is that why your good vibes sign is off right
now 'cause you know the vibes don't feel that good
for the Seahawks?
It is off right now?
No, it was more 'cause it was a rush.
But the vibes light is off.
Actually, I haven't been turning it on the last couple
episodes.
I will only turn this on after a win.
You have to turn it on after wins.
Light on that means things are going good.
Light off things are going bad.
And right now 4 out of five or five out
of six losses, Tyrell Dotson released, Jerome Baker traded, Connor
Williams retires.
The vibes are a little off and Connor Williams, let
me start with this.
Probably not as good as we expected him to be.
I looked on PFF out of qualified players, he's 24th,
but that's not like the minimum snaps.
So if I take minimum snaps at least to 20%
minimum snaps, he moves up to 18th.
That's not bad, right?
He's almost middle of the pack.
But signing Connor Williams, we were hoping would be a
little bit of a big, big upgrade for offensive line,
a solid center that we haven't had since, I don't
know, Max Unger.
And so it hasn't been as solid as we thought.
He's, you know, maybe a Lusaguna Luwatumi can kind of
you're just showing off now.
Yeah, that was good.
Unless it's teamy.
I don't know, but I'm doing good enough.
I know there's two variations.
He could be a 20th best center in PFF grading
or whatever.
Maybe.
But Connor Williams has had some mistakes.
Maybe he's just done.
He's been injured a few times in his career.
He's gotten ridiculed by Seahawks fans on Twitter that he
sucks.
There's so many people in reaction saying like good, like
move to the young guy and we'll let's like, let's
start working on this.
Like it's not going to be long term with what?
We weren't going to re sign him next year anyways.
Maybe he was also Lubin Lubin.
Amanda Matumi, by the way, was, you know, pretty high
draft pick.
There's I mean, there was and he was a really
high rated center in Michigan.
Yeah.
And Mike McDonald from Michigan, let's not forget that.
So it was J Harbaugh.
They maybe they were like, maybe I don't know, I'm
not going to say this, but like maybe there's some
Terrell Dotson into this where like they're like, we're going
to start working in night a little more and Datsun's
like I'm out.
Maybe they're like, we want to start trying out a
loo with Toomey, a loo with Timi, a little more,
maybe Connor Williams, like I'm done anyways.
You, you never know what these vibes are.
But I think in general, when you look at a
lot of what we had this year, Jerome Baker's, Terrell
Dotson's, Connor Williams, a lot of our free agent sightings
probably did not work out the way we thought they
were and not the Seahawks moving to the young guys.
And I think the Seahawks, despite fans never wanting to
hear this, I'm not saying the Seahawks are conceding the
year, but I think they are looking more towards the
future.
Now, this is unrelated to Connor Williams because I don't
know what actually happened, but I I'm fine with what's
going on because now we're going to start seeing more
young guys playing the young centers, the young linebacking core.
Ernest Jones is going to be someone we're going to
resign most likely.
He's been good since he came here.
We didn't make that trade just to like as a
rental for no reason for another rental, right.
All these were one year deals.
I think we're starting to move towards the future.
So whatever this Connor Williams thing means, I I don't
know, but I think it just means a little bit
more outside of his reasoning.
I think it's just now we're looking at the future
more.
Yeah, that's fair enough.
Well said.
Very well said there.
I I totally agree with you.
And I think the analogy is they're they're not giving
up on the season, but they're punting and playing some
field position.
Yeah.
I don't know.
What a weird week.
Yeah, I know.
Well, hopefully we beat the 49ers and make the week
a little weirder.
Yeah.
And it's like, oh, actually this young core is great
for the Seahawks.
All these retirements and releases were smart, and then we'd
be happy.
Well, shocking news.
We just wanted to do a quick pod today, talk
about this because it was not what we expected.
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It's a big week.
We need to win.
I I don't know what any of this means.
I don't know if Lulu Tumi is going to be
good or bad.
I don't know what's going to happen.
All I can say is I hope that Geno Smith
gets some protection because he needs it badly.
And if he doesn't, we are probably going to lose
to the 49ers.
And as we said yesterday on our episode, this is
kind of the season on the line.
So if you want to watch that episode, it's it
was yesterday on our page.
But season is on the line and we have a
lot of changes on this roster and just a one
bye week span.
George, just things are shifting.
Absolutely.
I don't know what's going on, but whatever, it's going
to be interesting.
Well, we'll be back hopefully after a win against the
49ers and we will talk to you guys soon.
You got anything else to say now?
That's it.
Well, we appreciate you guys tuning in.
And George, you know what we like to say.
Thanks for stopping by.
Peace.
You're listening to the Sports on Tap Seattle podcast.
I'm Sammy.
And with me, as always, as my older brother George.
Your favorite place to be a fan of Seattle sports?