Seahawks players ranked: Whose stock is up the most?

Which players will see their stock up or stock down in the Seahawks Stock Report, Week 3: Seaside Joe 2028

The Seahawks have already accomplished something this season that they should be super happy about: Going into their third game, Seattle has the exact same 53-man roster that they had at final cuts. Since trading for Trevis Gipson right before the deadline, the Seahawks roster has been locked in with the same 53 players despite Seattle being banged up at tackle, tight end, running back, linebacker, and edge.

There have been players activated off of the practice squad on game day, there have been injuries costing players games, but the Seahawks haven’t had to do an early season churn and that makes this late reveal of my top-55 Seahawks (53+2 key players not on the roster right now) as relevant now as it would have been two weeks ago.

Read all 55 player value explanations from past newsletters starting here.

After the full list and a few notes about it, I will post this week’s top risers and fallers on the Seahawks Stock Report. To support the daily Seaside Joe newsletter for the best fans in the world, please consider upgrading for only $5 per month:

I’m just going to let the list speak for itself, except to say a couple of things: a) This list was based what happened before the season and is not intended to be a prediction, which is why you might think to yourself, “Why is Jaxon Smith-Njigba below Dre’Mont Jones?”—just know that this list is only the starting point and my intention is not to imply that I “like” Jones more than I like JSN and b) The intention of the numbers is an attempt to pin each player with a value, i.e. “a QB is more valuable than a punter”, and not just necessarily quality or talent in a vacuum, although talent is hugely important because a bad QB would just be a bad QB. (But that QB would still be more valuable than the punter.)

Ranking the top 55 Seahawks player values going into 2024

1. CB Devon Witherspoon, 4.3

2. WR DK Metcalf, 4.3

3. DL Leonard Williams, 4.2

4. S Julian Love, 4

5. RB Kenneth Walker, 3.9

6. LT Charles Cross, 3.8

7. CB Riq Woolen, 3.8

8. S Rayshawn Jenkins, 3.8

9. QB Geno Smith, 3.7

10. OLB Boye Mafe, 3.6

11. TE Noah Fant, 3.6

12. DT Byron Murphy II, 3.5

13. OLB Dre’Mont Jones, 3.5

14. LB Jerome Baker, 3.4

15. WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba, 3.3

16. C Connor Williams, 3.3

17. OLB Uchenna Nwosu, 3.3

18. DT Jarran Reed, 3.3

19. RB Zach Charbonnet, 3.3

20. WR Tyler Lockett, 3.1

21. K Jason Myers, 3.1

22. RT Abe Lucas, 3.1

23. WR Jake Bobo, 3

24. EDGE Derick Hall, 2.9

25. P Michael Dickson, 2.8

26. CB Tre Brown, 2.6

27. LB Tyrel Dodson, 2.6

28. G Laken Tomlinson, 2.6

29. G Christian Haynes, 2.6

30. WR Laviska Shenault, 2.5

31. TE Pharaoh Brown, 2.5

32. RG Anthony Bradford, 2.5

33. OL George Fant, 2.5

34. OT Stone Forsythe, 2.5

35. C Olu Oluwatimi, 2.5

36. QB Sam Howell, 2.5

37. TE Brady Russell, 2.4

38. LB Tyrice Knight, 2.4

39. DT Johnathan Hankins, 2.4

40. S Coby Bryant, 2.4

41. TE A.J. Barner, 2.3

42. S K’Von Wallace, 2.3

43. EDGE Trevis Gipson, 2.3

44. DT Myles Adams, 2.3

45. KR/PR Dee Williams, 2.3

46. CB Nehemiah Pritchett, 2.3

47. OL Michael Jerrell, 2.2

48. DE Mike Morris, 2.1

49. G Sataoa Laumea, 2.1

50. C Jalen Sundell, 2

51. RB Kenny McIntosh, 1.9

52. WR/ST Dareke Young, 1.8

53. CB Artie Burns, 1.7

54. LS Chris Stoll, 1.5

55. LB/ST Drake Thomas, 1.4

Feel free to drop your immediate thoughts, although I might answer some of your questions in the following notes.

The scores I disagree with the most

Tyler Lockett at 20, tied with Jason Myers and Abe Lucas, feels like a travesty. Lockett has literally had game-winning plays in each of the first two games! So yeah, I’m not on board with all these numbers even though I created the numbers! If I were to eyeball a place on the list that Lockett feels more appropriate, it would be above Noah Fant. He’s OBVIOUSLY more valuable than Noah Fant, but the reason he didn’t score as well is largely based on a 32-year-old receiver (making a LOT) vs. a 27-year-old tight end, a showdown that should usually favor the younger player; in this case Fant can’t get around Lockett to reach the sticks, as usual.

If you skimmed the list and flinched at some of the order or scores, know you are not alone. I feel that way sometimes too! Yes, at my own scores, because these were just the averages based on my gut reactions to scoring the players in six different categories of attributes I considered valuable in the original creation of this test. When I re-do the list at midseason, I expect to now be able to grade my grades and hopefully have an order that we all find to be more accurate than this one.

Geno Smith being ninth and below Rayshawn Jenkins also feels unfair, but again these numbers were done before the season; if Geno stays on the path he’s been on for the first two weeks, he’ll shoot right to the top.

For the most part, I don’t think the list is unfair at all and I would recommend not getting fixated on the order of the names because one small change in score could dramatically change the order. The order isn’t that serious person-to-person, only when it’s tier-to-tier would it make that much of a difference. What do I mean by tiers?

How I might think of “Tiers” with a list like this

I talked about Chiefs defensive tackle Chris Jones in a previous post and why he’s a 4.9, which is when we start to get into how many “elite” players there are in the NFL and how relevent elite players are to winning playoff games. En route to their four recent Super Bowl appearances, the Chiefs have had several elite 4.5+ players. In reaching the Super Bowl last year, the 49ers had at least five elite players (McCaffrey, Trent, Bosa, Warner, Kittle would get no pushback on “elite”, I’m assuming) and then another group of players who would have scored at least a 4+, like Brandon Aiyuk and Deebo Samuel.

That’s why I would think you want the Seahawks to have a few elite players in the 4.5+ range, then another “Great” group between 4.0-4.4, and then the bones of the roster would be “Really Good” and “Good” players in the 3-3.9 group. Make note that a “Good” player now, might just be on track to being “Great” after he proves himself, such as JSN. How would the Seahawks breakdown going into 2024?

Elite: None (Don’t worry! They’re on the way!)

Great: Metcalf, Spoon, L Williams, Love

Really Good: Walker, Woolen, Cross, Geno, N Fant, Mafe, Murphy, Jones

Good: Baker, JSN, Reed, Charbonnet, Nwosu, Lockett, C Williams, Myers, Lucas*, Bobo

Again, do I think that Fant and Jones should be higher than JSN and Lockett? No! I do not think that. “So why don’t you change it?” That is definitely the idea.

But I’ll add this: Do I think JSN will get more targets than Lockett moving forward? I do. Do I think Lockett will be on the Seahawks after this season? Only if he comes to terms on a very team-friendly renegotiated contract, and that has to play a factor in overall “value” of each player. But with two weeks to reflect on these players in action again, Lockett > Charbonnet and quite a few other players ranked above him.

Stock Up

LT Charles Cross

He could have the highest score on the team by the end of the season. Here are his reps against New England’s best pass rusher, Keion White, and a sampling of the clip:

If you are okay with stats like pressures allowed and blown blocks, than this chart says that Cross is basically the best pass protecting tackle in the league through two games (he’s in the upper right hand corner):

If I was just valuing players based on the first two games, Cross would have to be top-3, right?

WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba

It’s possible that no player gets a bigger midseason bump than JSN, especially if he has three or four more games like he had in his breakout game against the Patriots. If we did this for college teams, JSN might have started his sophomore season at Ohio State as a 2.3, but ended it as a 4.8. He’s capable of changing the perception of his value that much in one season. We had a JSN article a couple of days ago, if you missed it.

S Rayshawn Jenkins

I don’t know how much higher he can go than a 3.8, but Jenkins did more to justify his relatively high score on Sunday against the Patriots. #2 fights through a pathetic block attempt by #1 (Polk) to make the run stop:

QB Geno Smith

One of the craziest stats through two weeks is that Gardner Minshew is sixth in pas attempts (71) but has completed 77.5% of his attempts, which is just an insanely higher number. However, Minshew is 30th in air yards/attempt (5.5) and he’s basically just pitching it to Davante Adams and Brock Bowers. Comparatively, Geno is 11th in intended air yards (7.7) yet he’s basically only two completions behind Minshew for completion% (51-of-69, 74%) and he’s been pressured at the eighth-highest rate in the NFL.

I haven’t compared Geno’s throws to the throws of every other QB, but I think he’s playing with a higher level of difficulty (OL+Opponent Defense+High Degree of Difficulty Throws) and executing well in the first two games of the Ryan Grubb offense.

LB Tyrice Knight

Regardless of how he played, he played. Any opportunity for reps is good for Knight, but only in time will we know if it’s good for the Seahawks.

C Connor Williams

Mike Macdonald said himself that Williams did better in Week 2 than Week 1, so I’ll take his word for it.

Stock Down

OLB Dre’Mont Jones

I get very annoyed with a “cliche” answer, so I don’t want to put Jones in stock down every week. I just think when you look at the big board and see Jones higher than JSN and Lockett, it warrants another mention for changes to come in the future.

G Laken Tomlinson

Again, there’s no reason to be a broken record in the Seahawks stock report, but with Mike Macdonald mentioning this week that Christian Haynes could get more reps at guard, is that at the expense of Tomlinson or Anthony Bradford? Because it seems like Bradford made progress in Week 2, while the only thing that Tomlinson allowed to progress was Keion White to the QB. Could Bradford potentially shift to the left side? That’s maybe the only “blunder” of the OL building phase, is that Seattle has two right guards, but do they have a player ready to step in at left guard without a weird “transitioning to a different side” period?

TE Noah Fant

As of today, Noah Fant is:

• The 11th highest-paid TE by AAV

• The 12th highest-paid by 2024 cap hit ($7.5m)

• The 7th highest-paid player on the Seahawks this season

• Tied for 163rd in receiving yards (25)

• 39th among tight ends in receiving yards

• 22 games removed from his last touchdown

I’ll always understand why fans defend the quarterback. I’ll never understand why people defend Noah Fant. He doesn’t block, he doesn’t get open, he doesn’t become a threat in the red zone, he doesn’t get yards after the catch, and he doesn’t have great hands or ball security. Fant has had fewer than 20 yards in five of his last six games, and nine of the last 15. He’s scoring a 3.6/5 here because of athleticism and a dearth of tight ends built like him, but I feel like he’s actually playing as though he’s a 2.5/5.

I wonder if Pharaoh Brown would steal some snaps from him in the coming weeks.