Julian Love, Rayshawn Jenkins put on their "Seahawks Pro Bowl safeties" suits
How do the Seahawks current four safeties grade out going into the 2024 season?
Julian Love might have been the best player on the Seahawks defense in their 26-20 win over the Denver Broncos in Week 1. While that might have made sense in 2022 if Love had been on the team that year, when Seattle’s best defensive player was potentially a fifth round rookie cornerback, it says a lot for Love to be the Seahawks best defender in 2024.
Sharing a field with Devon Witherspoon, Boye Mafe, Riq Woolen, Leonard Williams, and Byron Murphy, it’s probably Julian Love who is the most likely player to fill the void left by Bobby Wagner for a veteran leadership presence in the middle who can both make plays on his own and help others do their own jobs in the process.
Continuing the “Close Your Eyes” test experiment series with the rest of the Seahawks roster that I didn’t get to complete before the first game (but scores were already completed), we move over to the safety position and take a look at Julian Love, Rayshawn Jenkins, Coby Bryant, and K’Von Wallace. Where do each of them score on the categories Health, History, Supply & Demand, Versatility, Consistency, and Athleticism?
(Marquise Blair played in Week 1 but still isn’t on the 53-man roster, so I don’t have a grade for him yet.)
I highly recommend that you continue reading because the scores are already proving to be pretty accurate: I wouldn’t have given Love a “4/5” before the season if you had simply asked me to rate him out of 5 points. I probably would have been more conservative because a 4/5 is a “franchise player” and I didn’t know before Week 1 that we might be there with Love. But with the test, Love did score a 4/5 and this was done before he had an interception, a forced fumble, 12 tackles, and a TFL against Denver.
The test works!
Part I: Running backs
Part II: Wide receivers
Part III: Defensive Bigs
Part IV: Linebackers
Part V: Tight Ends
Part VI: Interior Offensive Bigs
Here are ratings (written before the season) on the Seahawks four safeties going into the 2024 season: