3 underrated advantages on Seahawks offense

These 3 depth players on Seahawks offense are better than most in the league: Seaside Joe 1952

Comparing Geno Smith to Kyler Murray and Jalen Hurts? Boring!

Comparing Jake Bobo to Jauan Jennings? Now that’s what I call football, volume 12.

These are THREE of the best players on the Seattle Seahawks depth chart going into 2024 training camp, when comparing their value to others around the NFL who are in the same roles. This isn’t comparing Jake Bobo to Brandon Aiyuk, two players with completely different roles, assignments, and traits necessary attributes to succeed at their jobs. This is comparing players to other players in the SAME role, not roles that have the same position name like “wide receiver” and assuming that they should all have the same output to be considered successful.

These are 3 underrated advantages on the Seahawks offensive depth chart.

WR4 - Jake Bobo

I’m skeptical that Bobo is a future number two, if for no other reason than “You should go look at how deep the league is at receiver right now”, but rewatching his top plays in this clip from The Hawk’s Nest was a good reminder that Bobo is more than just a guy:

I just think that the Seahawks will be best served with Jake Bobo as their excellent, top-of-the-league number four receiver. He doesn’t need to be anything more than that! Fans will be most likely to end up satisfied and elated with Bobo’s career if the general expectation for him is, “Wow, this guy is more useful than any other WR4 in the NFL.”

What does that mean? To me, it means that Bobo won’t start, but he will still get 10-20 snaps per game and will be ready to step up for more if a player getes injured. It means that he will be a special teams captain. It means that he could even get another jet sweep handoff.

Once you start trying to upgrade Bobo to be a replacement for one of your starters, that’s when I think things start going downhill.

You could say that Jermaine Kearse was like a WR4 in 2013 but then when he finished second on the team in targets in 2014, that’s not the player you want as your WR2 or the version of Kearse you want either. You want Kearse to be in limbo, somewhere below a starter and above a bench player who doesn’t see the field unless someone gets hurt. Everyone I’ve ever asked, “Why do you think the Seahawks didn’t have a dynasty after 2013?” they always give me the exact same answer, word for word, verbatim: “The Seattle Seahawks refrained from continual championships due to Jermaine Kearse’s rise from WR4 to WR2 and that is my sole answer, there are no other reasons.”

Hmmm, hard to argue with that.

Scanning the league’s other expected or potential WR4s, it is not easy for me to say with great certainty, “That guy I barely know is much better than that other guy I barely know.” Just in the NFC West, how does Jake Bobo compare to Jauan Jennings on the 49ers (if rookie Ricky Pearsall is a starter), Demarcus Robinson on the Rams, or Greg Dortch on the Cardinals? San Francisco just gave Jennings a new contract, so Seattle’s not the only team happy with their receiver depth right now.

If I didn’t write about the Seahawks, would I even think that Jake Bobo was an excellent WR4? I would bet that I would not feel this way exactly. That’s also probably part of the reason that fans seem more connected to “depth players”, they aren’t as appreciated by others as your star players are.

However, I know how to compare Bobo to some of Seattle’s past WR4 options, whether that be a Dee Eskridge, Marquise Goodwin, Freddie Swain, Penny Hart, David Moore, Jaron Brown, or Kearse, among others. In those terms, I can confidently say that Bobo is already better than most of those names and he can potentially have a ceiling of David Moore, if not a little bit higher. And by the way, if Jake Bobo is as good as David Moore that’s a huge win. Huge!

I don’t ask for more from Bobo than that, and I don’t even think he needs to be as good as Moore to be successful. Anything he does from this point forward is bonus material and his presence as the team’s fourth wide receiver option is not just good for a former undrafted free agent, I think he’s probably one of the best depth pieces in the NFC: He’s as cheap as they come, he’s under team control for a few more years, he is said to practice as hard as anyone, he plays special teams, and he had several of the best catches on the team last year, if not the best overall catch.

I know it’s hard to see a Seahawk make a catch like that and not think that he should be Seattle’s OBJ, but right now Bobo is Seattle’s “Jake Bobo” and that’s plenty good enough.

SEA-MORE COMMENTs

Don’t forget to keep reading the story in the Seaside Joe comments! I’ll post questions to the community, recommendations, further thoughts on stories, and more:

These next two “backups” could become starters at any moment, which makes them valuable depth pieces but potentially even more than that…and one of them could be a top-5 player at his position as soon as 2024: