Tacoma’s Matt Gotel from Lakes High re-signs with Seahawks, for prime chance at NFL debut

This summer, Matt Gotel said “this is my year” with his hometown team.

After what he called a minor setback, it still can be.

The Seahawks signed the Tacoma native and Lakes High School graduate back to their practice squad Tuesday. The move comes 6-1/2 weeks after Seattle waived the nose tackle with an injury designation during training camp.

A standard minimum time for injury settlements before a medically cleared player can sign with any NFL team is six weeks.

Gotel, 25, has always wanted to play for the Seahawks, and they need him.

Johnathan Hankins, a 12th-year veteran at age 32, is the only true nose tackle on the team’s 53-man active roster. Up next for Seattle: David Montgomery, Jahmyr Gibbs and rugged coach Dan Campbell’s Detroit Lions will be running right at the Seahawks defense Monday night in Michigan.

Seattle could be without injured defensive linemen Leonard Williams (ribs) and top rookie Byron Murphy (hamstring) against the Lions. Murphy has played some nose tackle when Hankins hasn’t through three games.

Coach Mike Macdonald has said this week how key Hankins and stopping the run is going to be to Seattle’s quest in Detroit to improve to 4-0 and maintain its two-game lead in the NFC West.

Hankins, whom the team conservatively lists at 335 pounds, was dominant in the second half, beating double teams and ruining Dolphins plays in the Seahawks’ 24-3 win over Miami last weekend. He wrecked three consecutive plays after the Dolphins had first and goal at the Seattle 4-yard line in the fourth quarter.

“Hank played a great game,” Macdonald said. “But that’s why we brought him here, to play games like that. So we’re going to need another big game out of him this week.”

If Gotel proves game-ready in practices this week, the Seahawks could elevate him from the practice squad to be part of the defensive-line rotation against the Lions.

It would be his first NFL regular-season game.

Matt Gotel’s path home

In the spring of 2022, just he played his final college football season for Division II West Florida, Gotel got a call from the Seahawks. He was home in Pensacola, Florida.

Gotel had made his way from his football start with a Steilacoom Bulldogs youth football team to the Little Lancers youth team in Lakewood, to the Lakes High Class of 2017, to Snow Junior College in Utah, to West Florida through 2022.

“They made me feel like I was special there (at UWF),” he said. “I was all-conference both years I was there. Then COVID hit. I decided not to enter the draft and play my last year (of extra, COVID-year eligibility) there. And (scouts from) Seattle came to my practice one day (in Pensacola) and was like, ‘Hey, man, aren’t you from Tacoma?’”

After the season, Gotel answered the Seahawks’ invitation to a local tryout in Renton. Then-coach Pete Carroll had come to Gotel’s Pro Day in Pensacola that spring.

“That’s when I really thought, ‘I might be a Seahawk,’” he told The News Tribune this summer.

Carroll and the Seahawks invited him to earn a place on Seattle’s 90-man roster in the preseason two years ago. In a tryout.

“They let me know like, ‘Hey, man, we really want you to come.’ I was like, I’m a broke college kid, right?” Gotel said. “Let’s grab some money together. And I worked in a 9-to-5 during the draft process. I was a YMCA manager. That was my job.

“But yeah, I was just trying to get my money together. And I was like, ‘Man, I gotta get on this flight. I know if I get there. I’m gonna get my opportunity.’ So that’s why I took it.

“Paid my own way.”

He bought a round-trip airline ticket from Pensacola to Seattle. On four days’ notice.

“Oh, no. Pensacola to Seattle,” Gotel said of getting to that Seahawks tryout. “I definitely had to break the credit card out.”

For two seasons, he went on and off and back on the Seahawks’ practice squads and preseason rosters. He signed twice and was released twice in short order by the Atlanta Falcons. He played in the XFL in the spring of 2023 with the San Antonio Brahmas.

Then, after the team’s fan-fest scrimmage at Lumen Field in early August, Gotel injured his ankle.

On social media, Gotel posted it was but “a minor setback.”

The Seahawks released him but told him they wanted him back later into this season. He was a free agent. The terms of his injury settlement included he couldn’t sign with an NFL team, until now.

Now Gotel has his best chance yet to make his NFL debut for his hometown team. Seattle ranked 31st in the NFL against the run last season, which subverted Pro Bowl quarterback Geno Smith, the offense and the entire Seahawks’ non-playoff season. This season, they allowed New England 185 yards rushing in week two, an overtime win.

Now that he’s back with the Seahawks, getting to play would cap a great year for Gotel. In March, at the Kubota Garden in Seattle, he proposed to his long-time love from their Lakes High School.

Sophie Molloy, a former miler on the Lancers’ track team, said yes.

“Hey, this is my year,” Gotel told the TNT before his injury in August.

“This defense fits me so well.”

Other transactions

The Seahawks signed another summer injury-settlement player to the practice squad: cornerback Tyler Hall.

Hall entered the league undrafted out of Wyoming in 2020. He’s been with Atlanta, the Los Angeles Rams, Las Vegas and Philadelphia during the last four seasons. He’s played in 31 games with six starts, primarily as an inside, nickel cornerback. He played three seasons for the Raiders before the Eagles signed him this spring. Philadelphia released Hall with an injury settlement in August.

The Seahawks put rookie running back George Holani on practice squad injured reserve. The team also released safety and former second-round pick Marquise Blair from the practice squad.

Holani, a rookie free agent, got hurt in his NFL debut elevated from the practice squad for the week two game at New England.