Love Course, he did
Julian Love's third season with the Seahawks could be the best of his football career
Julian Love’s ascension to being a top-10 safety over the past two years also makes him one of John Schneiders’ best value signings for the Seattle Seahawks alongside the likes of Michael Bennett, Cliff Avril, and Geno Smith.
With the help of Pete Carroll and the coaching staff, Love (who I wrote an origin story about two years ago) turned his skills as a college cornerback — one who finished second in the country in passes defensed in 2017 (20) and tied for sixth (16) in 2018 — who lacks the size and speed to stick outside in the NFL, into becoming one of the league’s top ball-hawking safeties.
Since joining the Seahawks in 2023, only seven players have more than Love’s seven interceptions and just four of them are safeties.
Love’s 22 passes defensed with Seattle is tied with Xavier McKinney for the third-most among safeties. Sports Info Solutions went outside the box by naming Love a first-team All-Pro safety for the 2024 season:
And to think that just three years ago, Love and McKinney were both starting for the New York Giants (as was Leonard Williams), a defense that had the second-fewest interceptions in the NFL in 2024. Lucky for Seattle, Love makes only two-thirds as much per year as McKinney despite being the same age and signing an extension last July, after McKinney left the Giants for the Green Bay Packers as a free agent.
Even Love’s extension is a discount.
At $11 million per season, Love is the 15th highest-paid player at safety, making less than the $13 million AAV that Talanoa Hufanga just got to leave the 49ers for the Broncos; Hufanga, a talented strong safety, has missed 17 games over the past two years.
The Browns paid Grant Delpit a $12 million salary on an extension signed in 2023 and he has just one interception over the past two seasons, barely getting a mention in ESPN’s top-10 safeties survey.
If Love isn’t one of the top-5 safeties in the NFL, and most of us would agree that he is not, he’s no less than a parting gift from Carroll that softened the blow of Seattle overpaying Quandre Diggs (on his second extension, not the first) and striking out twice with Jamal Adams. Love is cheaper and better than both of those safeties were in their final Seahawks campaigns.
At 27, Love has plenty of room left to add 3+ more quality seasons to his career resume:
Pro Bowl safety Justin Simmons also intercepted 7 passes during his age 25-26 years with the Denver Broncos, then Simmons had 16 more interceptions in the next three seasons
Simmons split time at Boston College between safety and cornerback, and like Love he lacked speed (his 40-time was actually much slower than Love’s) for anything but safety in the NFL
With Mike Macdonald calling plays, Love’s best career season could be in the future. In Macdonald’s final Ravens season, safeties Geno Stone and Kyle Hamilton had 7 and 4 interceptions, respectively. Without Macdonald, their careers have had a tumble:
Although it would still be unfair to compete Nick Emmanwori to Hamilton, the premise of having two different types of ballhawking safeties next to each other could end up with a 12+ combined turnovers forced season in Seattle’s near future.
When the Seahawks signed Michael Bennett and Cliff Avril in the same offseason, fans were definitely excited about the moves (they both had 9 sacks the previous year) but couldn’t foresee just how impactful those additions would be in Seattle making the next two Super Bowls. Like Love, both signed extensions and both rewarded the Seahawks for those re-investments with career years in the future and not just in their pasts.
Love could have taken a breather after signing an extension before last season started, as some players are clearly wont to do, but the work is never finished for a safety. Just ask Simmons, a Pro Bowl safety struggling to find work since he turned 30.
Instead, Love had a career-high 12 passes defensed, blocked a late field goal attempt to help Seattle beat the Patriots, and kept his title as one of the NFL’s best bargains at the position: He will only have a $6.1 million cap hit in 2025, which is actually LESS ($6.5m) than his cap hit in 2024. One of the team’s only Pro Bowlers, Love accounts for just 2.1% of Seattle’s total salary cap.
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Love will need another career-season in 2025 because his cap hit jumps to $13.2 million in 2026, with $4.76 million in savings if the Seahawks opt to release or trade him next year. If Love takes another jump up in 2025 though, Seattle will likely be forced to restructure his contract (turning his $8.3 million base salary into a signing bonus that makes him cheaper in 2026 but more expensive in 2027) and that could lead to new extension talks — just two years after he re-upped.
Things to improve
Missed Tackles
Julian Love was blamed for 10 missed tackles in 2024, one year after he was blamed for 10 missed tackles in 2023. That’s 20 missed tackles in two seasons, but Love his snaps increase by 142 snaps in 2024, so he may have actually had a slightly lower rate of missed tackles/opportunity.
Even so, cleaning up that rate wouldn’t hurt: McKinney missed just three tackles in 2024 and his missed tackle rate (3.3%) is less than half as low as Love’s.
Although I would perhaps be more interested in answering questions of “Does he take good angles?” and “How often is Love involved in stopping the run vs. shutting down a completed pass?”
Touchdowns Allowed
It is difficult to believe raw “touchdowns allowed” numbers because the closest defender to a touchdown pass may not be the person responsible for that touchdown being allowed. In many cases, we know for sure that he isn’t.
That being said, Love’s 6 touchdowns as the nearest defender in 2024 was the most of his career, doubling his next-worst season in that stat.
The main takeaway from that stat though is not necessarily to blame Seattle’s best safety (if not best deep player period) but to expect Mike Macdonald’s defense to be far stingier as a unit in 2025.
Julian Love All-22 Film Breakdown
For far more on what the actual film says about Julian Love as the Seahawks free safety, watch this 17-minute breakdown by our friend All-22 Film. It’s the most comprehensive and entertaining explanation of Seattle’s bargain defensive acquisition and what to expect from him in his third season with the Seahawks and second with Macdonald as the defensive coordinator:
Share what you think of Love’s play after watching that video in the Seaside Joe comments!
When a team makes the Super Bowl, it is players who other teams did not expect to be important who end up filling the gaps between the stars who get most of the credit for winning. Players like Bennett and Avril, and now Seattle hopes, Julian Love. He has single-handedly helped the Seahawks close out wins in each of the past two years that they most likely would not have had if not for him and his versatility goes a long way towards being the plug to those holes.
Now can the Seahawks find the stars to emerge on either side of Love, or was it him all along?
Seaside Joe 2322
With Emmanwori's flat-footed leaping ability to 10 feet(!), I am seeing opposing QBs adjusting the lanes they look for, along with slower lobs replacing fastballs. (Credits to Bootleg Football!) Or avoiding his area all together. Julian seems to be the unselfish kind of guy who will look to playing volleyball, tipping a touched pass to a teammate rather than a wild stab at getting it back to himself. Maybe we'll see a new stat added for 'interception assist'?
Another great article on one of our prized pickups! You are on a roll Joe! LOL. Im really excited to see Mike McDonald’s defense this year. With veterans coming back & rookies growing into his system each year add in Nick E. OH MY Gosh!!! how exciting! Im proud to be a Seahawks of over 30 Years!