Report: Seahawks open contract negotiations with former Texas Longhorns star

Texas Longhorns fans may want to start paying close attention to the Seattle Seahawks in the NFL.

According to a report from Corbin Smith, who covers the Seahawks for Sports Illustrated, the organization has opened negotiations with safety Quandre Diggs with hopes of re-signing him.

As Smith notes, Seattle is going into free agency with the hopes of keeping its secondary in tact. That would include finding the money to pay both Diggs and D.J. Reed, while also hoping to find a way to keep Sidney Jones in-house.

The former Texas Longhorns star has shined since joining the Seattle Seahawks in 2019, after playing his first five NFL seasons with the Detroit Lions. Diggs recorded five interceptions in back-to-back seasons in Seattle and is regarded as one of the top players at his position throughout the league.

Texas Longhorns commit egregious transfer portal error

It appeared that rising sophomore Texas punter, Isaac Pearson, was entering the NCAA Transfer Portal. But according to Joe Cook from Inside Texas, Pearson’s name was entered by mistake. Instead, punter Ryan Bujcevski is in the transfer portal as a grad transfer.

After Pearson was mistakenly entered to the portal, Texas withdrew the application and corrected it with Bujcevski’s entry, instead.

Pearson came to Texas as part of the 2021 recruiting class. He was rated as a three-star recruit, according to the On3 Consensus, a complete and equally weighted industry-generated average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies. He was rated as the fifth-best punter in his recruiting cycle.

Bujcevski was also a three-star recruit, and he came to Texas as part of the 2018 recruiting class. He was the second-ranked punter in his class. Bujcevski played in 30 games over his first three seasons with the Texas Longhorns before suffering a torn ACL late in the 2020 season. He did not play during the 2021 season. In his collegiate career, he has punted 134 times for 5,559 yards, averaging 41.5 yards per punt.

Both Pearson and Bujcevski are from Australia, and came from ProKick Australia before joining the Longhorns roster.

The NCAA Transfer Portal, which covers every NCAA sport at the Division I, II and III levels, is a private database with names of student-athletes who wish to transfer. It is not accessible to the public.

The process of entering the portal is done through a school’s compliance office. Once a player provides written notification of an intent to transfer, the office enters the player’s name in the database and everything is off and running. The compliance office has 48 hours to comply with the player’s request and that request cannot be refused.

Luckily, it looks like the Texas Longhorns dodged a major bullet.