RENTON, Wash. -- An avid golfer, Dwight Freeney said he played a bunch of rounds over the last few months while he waited not-so-patiently for the right opportunity to continue his NFL career into its 16th season. He was only kidding when he said the call from the Seattle Seahawks came at the perfect time because his golf game had started to fall apart.

The actual reason: Freeney was getting close to giving up on the possibility of playing in 2017 and perhaps ever again.

"I was literally one week away," Freeney said. "I was like, 'If I don't get a call now, I can't go into that same gym and work out doing the same workout again.' So thank God those guys called me and they said that they had interest. It kind of pushed me another week to work out and get going. I'm here now and I'm excited and hopefully we can get a win this weekend."

That interest, according to coach Pete Carroll, began when Cliff Avril went down in Week 4 with a neck injury that could sideline him for the rest of the season. The Seahawks brought Freeney in for a workout on Tuesday and agreed to terms on a one-year deal that became official on Wednesday.

With Seattle, Freeney gets to chase the second Super Bowl championship that eluded him last season as a member of the Falcons. A return to Atlanta had been in play but never worked out. And when the Seahawks called, it meant an opportunity for Freeney to join a defense that had intrigued him ever since he left the Indianapolis Colts following the 2012 season.

"You think of Dwight Freeney, you think of sacks," defensive tackle Sheldon Richardson said.

At 37 years old and with specs of grey in his beard, Freeney isn't the same player who racked up double-digit sacks in seven of his first nine seasons en route to 122.5 for his career. But the Seahawks believe he can still be an effective pass-rusher in a part-time role, which he has been over the last two seasons.

The Seahawks would be thrilled if Freeney could replicate the production he gave the Arizona Cardinals in 2015, when he had eight sacks while averaging about 23 snaps in 11 games. In 15 regular-season games with Atlanta, he averaged about 28 snaps a game and recorded three sacks. He had another one in the Super Bowl against the New England Patriots while being credited with six pressures of Tom Brady, according to Pro Football Focus.

"This is an extraordinarily savvy guy," Carroll said. "He's so smart and so well-schooled and he's got tremendous discipline about his part of the game, rushing the passer. It's going to help guys just being around him. He's very aggressive. He was very active last year, made a lot of things happen, film looked great. He's been kind of sitting out and waiting for an opportunity. He was really anxious to get back to playing, so it was a chance and it worked out. We're thrilled to have him."

Freeney's transition to Seattle's defense should be eased by the similarities it has to the one he played in last season under Dan Quinn, who spent three seasons on Carroll's staff in Seattle before becoming the Falcons' head coach. That appealed to Freeney. He had it much harder when he joined Arizona once the 2015 season was underway. Freeney recalled how he went from worrying about why his golf swing was producing a slice to having to learn a defense that was "completely foreign" to him.

"Once I accomplished that, I knew if I could do it there, where their Wednesday playbook is the size of a dictionary, then I can do it here, where it's similar to what I did in Atlanta, so all the terminology is pretty much the same," Freeney said.

That familiarity will help Freeney's chances of making the quick turnaround to play Sunday when Seattle hosts the Houston Texans at CenturyLink Field. That's the plan, according to Carroll.

Whenever Freeney makes his Seahawks debut, it will be a realization of something he's wanted to experience for a few years.

"Once I left Indianapolis, I was like, 'Man, it would be special to play in Seattle,' and one of the reasons being is because of the mentality on defense," he said. "It kind of gets lost sometimes in the league now [in] these days of high-powered offense, and I'm not saying by any means that our offense isn't good, but I think it's just a little something different on defense in this city and how the 12th Man really rises up and gets behind their D. I'm just happy to be a part of it."