Austin Blythe retires. Pete Carroll says Seahawks ‘gotta get the center thing figured out’

The Seahawks’ annual need for a new center is now official.

Veteran Austin Blythe, the team’s starter at its position that’s been an issue for eight years, on Tuesday announced his retirement that had been expected. Blythe, 30, retired after seven NFL seasons including a last one with Seattle via an online post via his Instagram account.

“The last 7 years have been nothing short of amazing,” the Super Bowl winner with the Los Angeles Rams in 2018 wrote. “For a short, unathletic, undersized kid from Iowa, I’ve played a lot of football, met countless coaches and teammates that I can call friends, and made enough memories for myself and my family to last a lifetime. I am so grateful, and extremely blessed, to have played the game for any amount of time, let alone 7 years. The game has been a huge part of our lives for the last 12 years, dating all the way back to college. For everything the game has taught me about life, I will cherish it forever.”

Blythe and his high-school-sweetheart wife Kylie had their third child in October, an event for which Blythe briefly left the Seahawks in the middle of last season.

In the locker room in Santa Clara, California, immediately after Seattle’s season-ending playoff loss at San Francisco in January, Blythe told The News Tribune he wasn’t sure he was going to play in 2023. Blythe’s one-year, $4 million contract ended with that wild-card playoff loss.

He co-owns a hunting club outside tiny Purnell, Iowa, near his hometown, with his father-in-law who also was his high school football coach. He, his wife and their children don’t have to shuttle between Iowa and Seattle anymore.

Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith posted on his Twitter account emojis of a broken heart and a crying eye over Blythe’s retirement announcement.

“Congrats brother Was a pleasure playing with you this year! Gonna miss you bro...” Smith wrote online.

So continues a string of one-and-done, short-term attempts to find a center by the Seahawks.

It’s been an ongoing quest for most of the eight years since the team traded Pro Bowl center Max Unger to New Orleans for tight end Jimmy Graham.

“We gotta get the center thing figured out,” Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said Tuesday at the NFL’s annual scouting combine in Indianapolis. “Austin had a really nice year for us last year and did a good job for us. Really good leader for us.

“We got to get that thing nailed.”

The Seahawks are likely to have new starters at two of their three spots on the interior of their offensive line, the placed their offense often got overrun by San Francisco inside the NFC West last season.

Last week the Seahawks re-signed Phil Haynes to a one-year, $4 million contract beyond his rookie one that just ended. That likely signals the end of veteran Gabe Jackson’s time in Seattle. Jackson and Haynes split time as the first-team right guard in the 2022 season.

Jackson, 31, is four years older than Haynes. He is scheduled to have a salary-cap charge of $11.26 million in 2023. That’s the seventh-highest on the Seahawks for this year. His base salary in the final year of his contract is $6.5 million. Importantly, none of that money is guaranteed. That’s $6.5 million the team is likely to create in cap space soon.

The rest of the Seahawks’ offensive line is under contract for 2023. Tackles Charles Cross and Abe Lucas will be entering the second seasons of their rookie contracts after stellar debut years.

“We are certainly going to bank on them now,” Carroll said Tuesday.

Left guard Damien Lewis will be entering the final year of his rookie deal he signed as Seattle’s third-round draft choice in 2020. Lewis is set to $3 million with a $3.27 million cap charge for 2023.

Lewis and Haynes are on inside tracks to be the team’s starting guards next season — for a roughly combined cost of about what Jackson is scheduled to cost Seattle this year.

It’s galling to Seahawks fans that the team could have solved its issue at center in the 2021 draft. Creed Humphrey out of Alabama was available as the most highly-regarded center in that draft class. The Seahawks had Ethan Pocic and Kyle Lewis as two undistinguished centers in 2020.

They chose to bring back both Pocic and Fuller, pass on Humphrey and draft wide receiver Dee Eskridge with their second-round pick in 2021.

Eskridge has played in 20 games with little contribution to the offense over two, injury filled seasons.

Humphrey became a starter as a rookie with Kansas City — beating out Blythe before Blythe signed with Seattle. Humphrey has won a Super Bowl and been selected to the Pro Bowl through two stellar seasons with the Chiefs.