Seahawks: 2025's #1 Defense
The signs -- and signings -- are all there
Do you know why this screenshot implies that the Seahawks are trending towards having the NFL’s #1 defense in 2025:
Any guesses as to what the highlighted players have in common?
Every single one of them is already under contract for 2025. This is the type of continuity that money can’t buy that money literally bought. And good drafting.
Dominating the Arizona Cardinals and holding them with Kyler Murray to 49 rushing yards is encouraging, but it’s not nearly as important as the fact that the Seahawks are over halfway through Mike Macdonald’s first season and right on queue it’s beginning to feel like the players are actually “getting it”.
Even Dre’Mont Jones is actually kind of good now.
With 12 of 16 defensive players who played on Sunday under contract for 2025, the Seahawks have very little work to do on that side of the ball as long as players like Coby Bryant, Tyrice Knight, and other pleasant surprises continue to perform as well as they have recently. That makes retaining the few hanging chads — Ernest Jones and Jarran Reed — a straightforward and simple process between the end of the season and the start of free agency.
By all accounts, John Schneider didn’t trade a fourth round pick for Jones IV just to let him walk without a fight.
The defensive depth chart that the Seahawks take into their Week 13 matchup against the New York Jets isn’t likely to have many changes when Seattle opens the season in 2025. A few years ago, a sentence like that one would have terrified Seahawks fans worse than the bedroom scene in Terrifier 2.
But now it’s actually a positive.
Seahawks Potential 2025 Starting Defense:
DL - Leonard Williams, Byron Murphy II, Jarran Reed*
EDGE - Boye Mafe, Derick Hall, Uchenna Nwosu^, Dre’Mont Jones^
LB - Ernest Jones*, Tyrice Knight
CB - Devon Witherspoon, Riq Woolen, (???)
S - Julian Love, Coby Bryant
*Free Agent
^Cap Casualty Candidate
Essentially, Macdonald already knows next season’s starting defense and that’s as simple as John Schneider extending Jones IV (projected AAV: $9-$14m) and re-signing Reed, which shouldn’t be that hard given his obvious affinity for being in Seattle.
This leaves only 2 questions for me:
Will the Seahawks cut both or either of Jones and Nwosu?
Who is the Seahawks other outside CB in base defense?
Uchenna Nwosu is not going to return this week, but he will start practicing and could be back to face the Cardinals on December 8th, which is also Seattle’s most important game left as far as anyone can tell. It seems obvious to cut Nwosu because he’s only played in 303 snaps since signing an extension last year, and his $14.5 million base salary has no guarantees.
That’s $14.5 million in cash (Seattle is projected to be $5 million over the cap) that the Seahawks could use for an Ernest Jones signing bonus.
However, if Nwosu (who has played just 20 snaps for Macdonald) is better than Mafe and Hall in the last few games, can the Seahawks do better than him in free agency with the $8.5 million they’ll save against the 2025 cap?
Maybe not.
Surprisingly, Jones may be a harder case than Nwosu because he’s healthier than Nwosu, he’s more versatile, and he’s arguably having a better season than Mafe and/or Hall. Jones shows up multiple times in All_22’s breakdown of the dominant performance by Leonard Williams this week:
But Jones has a $16 million base salary with no guarantees and the Seahawks will save $11.5 million if they release him. If Seattle decides — “Hey, we know that’s a lot of money but it’s going to be very hard to teach a new guy what we’ve already taught to Dre’Mont Jones” — and sticks with continuity, Schneider could use Jones’ void years in 2026 and 2027 to push some of those cap commitments into the future. Or the team could extend him for a deal closer to what he’s actually worth.
As to the cornerback situation
Josh Jobe is a restricted free agent, so the Seahawks will probably look to keep him as long as he continues to play in 60%+ of the snaps. Whether or not Seattle actually likes Jobe as a starter remains to be seen, but they also have Nehemiah Pritchett on the roster and two players — Demarion Williams, Faion Hicks — on the practice squad for now.
Tre Brown is set to be a free agent and has been benched.
Even still, that’s just ONE position on the defense that needs to be addressed and is something that likely doesn’t get put on the table until free agency or Day 2 of the draft.
As to the linebacker situation
Whether or not Macdonald loves what he sees out of Jones IV and Knight is yet to be determined because that will depend on the final six games and playoffs, if there are playoffs. But the early signs on Knight could be more encouraging than the first half of the season with Tyrel Dodson and Jerome Baker.
If Macdonald goes into the offseason optimistic about Knight, the Seahawks have almost no questions left about the defense and can almost exclusively focus on an offense that DOES need a lot of help.
The Situation
Let’s just pretend that the Seahawks end 2024 on a high note and love their new defense. These steps could follow:
Restructure Dre’Mont to save $10 million cap space
Restructure Leonard to save $9.3 million cap space
Release Uchenna ($8.5 million savings), Rayshawn Jenkins ($5.4 million), and Roy Robertson-Harris ($6.6 million)
These 5 moves alone get the Seahawks to $35.5 million in cap space (the 2025 cap is a projection and not yet known) and that’s more than enough to re-sign Jones IV, Reed, and Jobe with at least $24-$26 million-ish remaining.
(As this is a DEFENSIVE newsletter, I haven’t even gotten into the savings that the Seahawks will get by making changes on offense, not the least of which is $17 million savings WHEN Tyler Lockett is released.)
Bringing back Uchenna on a new contract after he is released — a $22 million player who has missed over 3/4ths of his career since the contract — is totally within the realm of possibility too.
Then the Seahawks would need at least one starter-quality corner, defensive line depth, someone to replace Jenkins as the third safety, and should always be expected to keep adding edge rushers, but when they play the Jets this week they’re basically playing with all of the same starting players on defense that they’ll have in 2025.
That’s not just a major advantage to have in general, it’s a league-flipping advantage if the defense is young, good, and getting better.
Seaside Joe isn’t quite ready to say that the Seahawks defense is good yet — the Cardinals had some really shitty offensive linemen out there — but hell yeah they’re a young group that’s getting better.
Seaside Joe 2096
First comment! (Yay….)
I’m staggered by the change in the defense since Jones and Knight took over. I’m sure other factors influenced (like Witherspoon at nickel where he’s unavoidable, vs stranding him on an island — brilliant!), but it took major balls to jettison both starting LB’s you paid a pretty penny to bring in. Macdonald had to be very convincing to Schneider about what was wrong; they both had to agree a guy like Jones was the missing ingredient (wonder who else fit the bill??), and they had to agree the rookie could step in if next to Jones. Ballsy ballsy ballsy. The results give great credibility to Macdonald — he called it and then showed it.
And moving Spoon to nickel where he’s in the middle of the field was also brilliant.
And whatever they put in Williams’s breakfast cereal.
I don’t know man, it’s only been three games but essentially handling both Shanahan and McVay after years of getting our asses handed to us, and essentially stuffing the Cards’ running game after getting bulldozed earlier by lesse running games, is so SWEET!!
I hope I’m not getting overly optimistic but if you’re right (and you make a great argument), this could be amazing once this defense truly gells (I mean honestly, it’s only been three games since Jones and Knight took over). Wow!!
I see Chenna being out due to a dirty hit taking out his knee (bstrds). Keep him. As we saw with Abe, the knee can take a lot of time to get right again. I think a little loyalty will go a long way toward securing a full unit of buttkickers who call Seattle Home. No doubt JS can come up with something to neutralize any downsides his agent can raise and still leave room to grow. As for Jones IV, methinks our Coach knows when he has His Man. Jones' arrival spelled immediate Good Things for what MM is trying to implement. As Geno is showing us, no one Man is The Heartbeat of this Team. I guarantee every one of them is seeing a group with Super Bowl win-potential. How much is that worth?