The Seahawks complete their secondary plan by agreeing to sign Jamar Taylor cornerback

The Seahawks took another quick decision as the independent NFL agency entered a new phase, agreeing to recruit veteran cornerback Jamar Taylor, a source confirmed by the Seattle Times. The news was reported for the first time by the NFL network.

Taylor, who weighed 5-11 years and weighs 192 pounds, is expected to enter the competition at the corner position (nickel) or defense of the inner corner half, a place where Seattle used last year Justin Coleman, who signed with the Lions in free mode. He should officially sign with Seattle on Thursday.

Taylor, who turns 29 on September 29, played at Boise State and was a second-round Dolphins pick in 2013. He has 41 career starts, most with the Browns – a combined total of 27 in 2016 and 2017.

He played 14 games in total last season for Arizona and Denver, including three starts with the Cardinals in the first three games of the season, before being released in December and then signed by the Broncos.

Taylor then became an unrestricted free agent and, like the Seahawks with Ziggy Ansah, they waited to sign Taylor after the deadline, when the signatures of unrestricted independent agents counted for the formula for determining compensatory draft picks for 2020.

Taylor would have visited the Seahawks in early April.

Seattle's slot position seems wide open with Coleman's departure. Seattle has three veteran candidates on his roster in Akeem King, Kalan Reed and Jeremy Boykins and could also use the 2019 draft pick, Ugo Amadi.

Amadi, a fourth round pick in Oregon, was pretty badly caught in the slot at the rookie minicamp last weekend. Head coach Pete Carroll later said he had played more than the team had planned.

Now, Taylor is involved in the mix – with the timing of his signature, certainly due to the formula of choice of the comp and no idea what they saw in Amadi – to occupy what is more and more a place key in the NFL, with teams in the defense play typically around two-thirds of the time.

"It will be a largely open model and we'll see how it goes," said Carroll instead of nickel in March.

The Seahawks hope that Taylor will be able to return to the form he had shown in 2016 when he was named the NFL's most improved corner-half by Pro Football Focus, who said at the time Taylor was sent from Miami to Cleveland via a seventh-place tradeoff in the 2016 NFL Draft. One of the main reasons he showed such a dramatic improvement was the way he was deployed. With the Dolphins, Taylor only played 5% of the snapshots in the slot. In Cleveland, he spent 32% of his shots there. For this reason, he found more success by cutting the routes (51.3 authorized crossing points), the slopes (62.5) and the crossing routes (48.8). After being found ranked 106^th In total, among the CBs in 2015, Taylor became our 19th CB in 2016. "

At the league meetings in March, Carroll also talked about Reed, King and Boykins' chances of winning the job.

King played a few corners in a six-program backstroke last year while Seattle kept Reed on the 53-man roster at the end of the year with the idea that it might be necessary to replace Coleman.

"He will be in the competition," Carroll told King. "He did a very good job. He will also try his luck at nickel. We played him there in the dime situation and moved him in and out of there. He's bigger than the other guys, has a big solid mount and weighs over 200 pounds. He has been very consistent, he is very fast and we like him a lot. From what he did last year, we are expanding his role, seeing where he can take it and expecting him to play for us regularly. "

King, however, is 6-1, 215, which does not really fit the traditional mold of a corner corner, but Reed, 5-11, 199.

"Often that's where a little guy gets a chance," Carroll said. "But it does not have to be a smaller guy. But we will see how he goes. We will have to compare it to all types. We have enough information to make us feel comfortable. It will be interesting to see what happens. He will have a good competition. We have some other guys who will fight for the place too. "

Carroll said that one of the other guys is the 6-2, 183-pound Boykins who caught Seattle's attention at training camp last year and spent much of the season in the practice team.

"I want to see what he's doing in there," Carroll said. "He's a very fast guy who did a great job for us. You do not know much about him. It is longer, it looks more like Akeem. Really fiery, really challenging. Kalan Reed will also be touched. We love what he does. He has already played there. We know that he looks good there too. ''