Seattle certainly has the potential to continue to be dominant, but losing some key players on D seemed to bring Seattle's vaunted D back to merely "good", and I would think the cap restraint probably caused Okung to move on to greener pastures (leading to regression in the O line and lower run productivity overall.) I remember Rawls starting off very promising in 2015 and falling off a cliff (much like Gurley) in 2016. Was that all on Rawls? I doubt it, since the snappy athleticism and ability to get to the 2nd level from Okung was causing Lynch to benefit nearly every play. I can't pin everything on RW's new contract, but an extra $20million a year certainly made it more difficult to hold on to top players.
I don't know the team well enough to know how vital the retention of Okung was, or the inability for the core defenders of BWags, Sherm, Bennett and Thomas to retain the shutdown pass D they had the previous years. Moving from a 500k/year salary to a $20+M/year salary MUST have harmed Seattle somewhat. Derek Carr was only looking at a little over a million bucks a year, so this is really going to give the Raiders some pain when other good players start looking for contracts suitable to their talents.
I saw the same thing happen with Seattle, even if perhaps you see it differently.
