Decorated OL Peters to retire, join Seahawks’ front office
Legendary offensive lineman Jason Peters is retiring after 21 seasons in the NFL and will take a job in the Seattle Seahawks’ front office, general manager John Schneider told reporters at the scouting combine in Indianapolis on Tuesday.
Peters, who spent the past two years with the Seahawks, will take a player-development role under vice president of player affairs Mo Kelly, Schneider said. Peters’ specific title is listed on the Seahawks’ website as “veteran mentor.”
Peters amassed one of the most decorated résumés for an offensive lineman in NFL history, going from undrafted in 2004 out of Arkansas to a surefire Hall of Famer. He made nine Pro Bowls, was twice named a first-team All-Pro and was selected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s All-Decade Team for the 2010s. He won a Super Bowl with the Philadelphia Eagles after the 2017 season.
Peters played in 233 regular-season games for the Buffalo Bills (2004-08), Eagles (2009-20), Chicago Bears (2021), Dallas Cowboys (2022) and Seahawks (2023-24). That included eight games and two starts with Seattle in 2023 after joining the team’s practice squad.
The Seahawks signed him back to their practice squad last October, after he was set to retire, but he didn’t appear in a game.
Louis Riddick and the “Get Up” crew discuss the biggest issues the Dallas Cowboys need to fix to be competitive again. (2:12)
FRISCO, Texas — At some point in the next few days, a video memory will pop up on Jake Ferguson’s cell phone, as it has every February since 2022.
It’s a video he took at the NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis, zooming in and out on a Cowboys hat, a couple of months before the Dallas Cowboys took the Wisconsin tight end in the fourth round.
“I was like, ‘I want to go to the Cowboys. I want to go to the Cowboys,'” Ferguson said. “I was manifesting it, and I walked in the [combine interview] and I was like, ‘OK.’ I remember smiling at Coach [Mike] McCarthy, too. But I walked in and I was like, ‘All right, this feels like home.'”
That year, Ferguson was one of 45 players formally interviewed by the Cowboys at the combine inside a suite at Lucas Oil Stadium. It lasted 18 minutes, hardly enough time to get to know everything about somebody, but enough to want to know somebody more — or maybe less.
Ideally, these interviews serve as a checklist as to whether the Cowboys want to bring the player in for one of their critical top-30 visits. In Ferguson’s case, the Cowboys got all the answers they needed in the interview process and were not compelled to bring him to The Star for a visit.
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“By the time we get to [the combine], we are either confirming or verifying information,” assistant director of college scouting Chris Vaughn said. “We’ve got a lot of information already, but if we think a guy’s really smart, now we’re verifying that. Rarely do we go in and start a report from scratch. We’re further along the process. The 18 minutes doesn’t seem like a lot of time, but we know what we want to get to.”
This week in Indianapolis, the Cowboys will meet with another 45 players for formal interviews and dozens of others in informal meetings. They already met with a number of prospects at the Senior Bowl and East/West Shrine Game as a prelude to the combine.
The Cowboys have a new head coach (Brian Schottenheimer), defensive coordinator (Matt Eberflus) and offensive coordinator (Klayton Adams), but their process has not changed.
If there is an offensive player set to be interviewed, Schottenheimer will be there with Adams and the position coach. Vice president of player personnel Will McClay will also be in the room, along with Mitch LaPoint, the director of college scouting, and Vaughn. A national scout, as well as the area scout who visited the school during the year, might be included, too, in addition to some other staffers.
The prospect sits at the head of the table with all eyes peering at him as he looks at a video screen or white board. He will see some Cowboys’ plays on tape as well as some of his own plays from college that will be dissected.
“It’s stressful if you make it stressful,” Ferguson said. “Everybody’s like, ‘It’s the rest of your life,’ but honestly, you just need to be yourself. That’s what got you there.”
These days, players go through prep work, not only for the on-field combine drills but also the off-field interviews.
The Cowboys start their player interviews by asking background questions. Beforehand, they have their in-house security team and general counsel go through any legal issues a player may have, so they know the answers to the questions they are about to ask.
“Some of the guys are very honest,” LaPoint said. “Some of the guys we’ll know that they completely lied. So you just kind of know you want to avoid them.”
Said Vaughn, “It’s all kind of building to show you who the guy is, who you’re potentially investing in or potentially bringing into your locker room.”
Most of the discussion is about football. The coaches in the room will draw up different formations on the white board and have the player remember them. Then they will pivot to a different topic, only to go back to the formation and have the player draw it up later. They are testing a player’s memory and how well and quickly he can learn.
“You’re listening, taking notes on how the guy comes across, how he talks the game,” LaPoint said. “You want to understand that. You want to see his poise.”
Some interviews stand out. LaPoint was in the room when the Cowboys talked to Penn State linebacker Sean Lee in 2010. Lee’s understanding of defensive concepts, his energy and leadership stood out to everybody in the room.
“I wanted to draft that guy right then,” he said of the Cowboys’ second-round pick that year.
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Tight ends coach Lunda Wells is one of eight holdovers from McCarthy’s staff. He has developed a plan when he interviews players at the combine.
“I’m really trying to put the player in a position, as if we’re in the meeting room, and get him to talk football, so I’ll know his origins in terms of his football knowledge,” Wells said. “Maybe I’ll get him to stand up and show me what he’s been taught. I just try to make it as much about being in the meeting room setting, so that I then get the best feel for him as a player.”
Wells was in the room when the Cowboys interviewed Ferguson.
After he asked Ferguson to draw up the formations, they looked at some tape.
“I absolutely whiffed on a guy in the Penn State game or something. The dude swam at me, and I missed the guy,” Ferguson. “Coach Wells was like, “What are you going to do here the next time?’ I’m like, ‘This is my block. This is how I’m supposed to do it, and I missed on it.’
“He goes, ‘What are you going to do the next time?’ I answered him again. He asked it again. Finally, I just said, ‘Well, I’m going to f— him up.’ And he goes, ‘Good.'”
Two months later, the Cowboys drafted Ferguson, who went on to catch 149 passes for 1,429 yards in his first three seasons and made the Pro Bowl in 2023.
“The first day in here,” Ferguson said, “the first thing [Wells] said to me was about the interview.”
Fred Warner joins Pat McAfee to discuss the San Francisco 49ers’ disappointing 2024 season. (1:08)
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — One day after the San Francisco 49ers’ season ended, running back Christian McCaffrey stood before a crowd of reporters and reflected on the extensive frustrations it had wrought. After missing 13 games with right knee and bilateral Achilles injuries, McCaffrey provided a succinct summary of a year that had begun with Super Bowl dreams and finished with the disappointment of a 6-11 record.
“I think we’re all pissed off in the right ways,” McCaffrey said. “And I think that’s a good place to be.”
Unlike previous letdowns sparked by postseason heartache, the anger left in the wreckage of the 2024 season has much longer to fester.
The 2023 season ended with a loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LVIII on Feb. 11, 2024. From there, the 49ers had 18 days before the NFL scouting combine and 29 days before the start of free agency’s early negotiating window.
This year, however, the 49ers have had plenty of time to assess what went wrong, how they intend to fix it and to implement those plans. When the combine opens on Thursday, they will be 53 days removed from the end of the season with the early free agent window opening 64 days after their season-ending loss to Arizona.
And while the Niners would prefer the smaller windows that come with a deep postseason run, there’s value in getting a longer break to mentally and physically recover and set a course for the offseason.
“It gives you more time to figure things out,” coach Kyle Shanahan said. “It gives you time to go through the things like the cutups and stuff. You can finish most of that stuff all before the Super Bowl. And then you’re ready to go to other stuff like the draft and free agency and all that as soon as the Super Bowl ends. So just being a lot more ahead of that is real exciting.”
In one significant way, having the full offseason to work with has already been beneficial for the Niners. When Shanahan decided to fire Nick Sorensen and seek a fourth defensive coordinator in as many seasons, he quickly pointed out that such a move might not have made as much sense if the 49ers had played deep into January or February.
Shanahan knew well how the pool of qualified coordinator candidates could be limited on the heels of a longer season. In 2023, DeMeco Ryans left to take the Houston Texans head coaching job on Jan. 31. Shanahan eventually hired Steve Wilks to replace Ryans on Feb. 9.
When Shanahan decided to move on from Wilks after a Super Bowl run, that didn’t happen until Feb. 14, 2024. Sorensen was promoted in early March after Shanahan went through an extended interview process.
This time, however, Shanahan was able to make a quick decision and zero in on the coordinator he wanted: Robert Saleh. While there was interest in Saleh for multiple head coaching jobs, he was a clear target for the 49ers from the beginning. If they had again advanced to the latter stages of the playoffs, there’s a real chance he wouldn’t have been available.
Instead, the Niners hired Saleh on Jan. 24. That’s five days earlier than their final game of the 2022 season and 18 days earlier than their last contest of the 2023 season.
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“It’s a little bit harder in February, which the last two were,” Shanahan said. “Just being the last team to finish last year and before that, being the second-to-last team to finish makes it a lot different.”
Of course, filling out a coaching staff with more viable candidates available isn’t the only benefit of having more offseason time. While it remains to be seen just how much it will help in 2025, it was no surprise that the 49ers were one of the most banged-up teams in the league in 2024 after playing a combined nine playoff games in the three previous years.
The toll of those seasons seemed to catch up to the Niners in 2024 when they played big chunks of the season without McCaffrey, left tackle Trent Williams (left ankle), defensive tackle Javon Hargrave (torn right triceps), receiver Brandon Aiyuk (torn right ACL), linebacker Dre Greenlaw (left Achilles/right calf), safety Talanoa Hufanga (wrist) and punter Mitch Wishnowsky (back).
Defensive end Nick Bosa, tight end George Kittle, receiver Deebo Samuel Sr., quarterback Brock Purdy, cornerbacks Charvarius Ward and Deommodore Lenoir and guard Aaron Banks also missed games with shorter-term issues.
All of it contributed to a season that, when it was over, left various players planning to take some time to rest and reflect on how quickly the league can get the better of them.
“When you have a lot of success for a couple years in a row and then you get humbled quick, it’s a good reminder of what it takes to be good in this league,” McCaffrey said. “Not that we needed a reminder, but I’m just excited for the offseason to get everybody a little bit of rest, get healthy again, and come back ready to go with a full year in front of us.”
Of course, the most important steps in this offseason still sit in front of the 49ers. They’ve revamped the coaching staff with Saleh and new special teams coordinator Brant Boyer, and they added another experienced defensive coach in Gus Bradley.
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But tough roster decisions remain. In the coming weeks, they will prepare for a free agency that will see them release Hargrave with a post-June 1 designation, potentially trade or release Samuel and look to re-sign some of their own key free agents such as Greenlaw, Hufanga and Banks.
Depending on where the cap falls, the 49ers will have around $50 million in space, though some of that will be earmarked for a Purdy extension and a NFL draft class led by the No. 11 overall pick. With significant needs on the offensive and defensive lines, as well as help needed in nearly every other position group, every move will matter if the 49ers are going to return to contention in 2025.
“We can go more in depth this year,” general manager John Lynch said. “I think you always try to look for the positive in situations, and there isn’t a whole lot of positive of not being in the playoff run. You have to make it a positive because we have this time, how are we going to use it? And I think we can focus a little bit more on where we want to go, where we want to evolve in both personnel, scheme, all these things.
“And that’s what we’ll do, we’ll take advantage of the time. In a sense, it kind of energizes you to come back and have this time to really put our minds and our staff’s minds together to come out with the best, to give us the best opportunity to compete going forward.”
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