2024 Seattle Seahawks Predictions: Defensive Line

2024 Seattle Seahawks Predictions: Defensive Line

can the Seattle Seahawks get value out of all the resources they have poured into their defensive line in [Music] [Applause] 2024 what’s up everybody good morning welcome back we have another prediction video here and now we are moving to the other side of the football we are moving over to the defense specifically to a position an area of the team where there’s been a massive investment and on paper the investment has paid off there are many respected NFL writers out there who will tell you that the Seattle Seahawks have one of the best defensive lines in the league and they got there by pouring massive resources into that position over the last couple years Leonard Williams they gave him 60 3 million last year after trading a second round pick and a fifth round pick to get him at mid-season Byron Murphy was a mid first round selection the offseason prior they gave draymont Jones about 52 million they spent a middle Draft pick on Mike Morris they gave a two-year free agent contract to jiren Reed a couple off seasons ago so they have spent on this position so it should be a position of strength and if it’s not that bodess very poorly for what the Seahawks will be able to do in the 2024 season and it also bodess very poorly towards this front office’s ability to recognize what they should be doing and who they should be investing their resources on so we’re going to take a look at this admittedly very impressive on paper defensive line offer up some statistical predictions now when it comes to players on the defensive line especially in a 34 defense like we’re presumably going to be running or whatever you want to call this Mike McDonald defense the stats are not going to tell the whole picture there’s a lot more that needs to be gotten into there’s a lot more that goes into whether or not these guys are doing their job I understand that but we’re going to do the best we can with the information that we have there’s a lot of things that go beyond the box score beyond the numbers I think we all understand that and I think we all understand that this will only tell a part of the picture but the box score can help before we get into the numbers here I want to ask that if you like this video please click the thumbs up button down below subscribe to the channel if you’re new click the Bell if you want notifications consider becoming a channel member as well join the channel costs about $2 a month and let’s open her up with Leonard Williams Leonard Williams certainly a guy we have massive expectations for these next couple years so Leonard Williams traditionally has been a player that gets a lot of tackles on the defensive line I do think that that’ll diminish a little bit this year because we have a thicker rotation he shouldn’t have to play as much and I also it’s hard to know exactly what McDonald and dirty and dir are going to do with their defensive lineman compared to what we did previous years are we going to be asking them to do and a half are we going to be asking them to do you know single Gap stuff how are they going to be utilized are they going to be doing Gap shooting or are they going to be just trying to take absorb attention from the blockers what exactly is going to be the utilization and there have been reports in training camp that Leonard Williams is playing a bunch of different positions in McDonald’s defense so how he’s utilized might affect his stats I don’t think it’ll affect how good a player he is but I went with 57 which would be a decrease from his better seasons in the past just because I don’t think he’ll be playing as much he is past his prime age-wise so I I don’t think it’s going to go up and I don’t think it’s going to be as high as it usually is but he’ll be doing his job so 57 tackles and then I went with nine tackles for loss it would be kind of weird to give $63 million to Leonard Williams and not have him do things that he does well like shooting gaps so he’ll do it some he’ll make some plays in the back Back Field and I think we’ll be pretty happy with his playmaking ability even if it goes one way or the other based on the new coaching staff so nine tackles for loss and I went with six and a half sacks um wouldn’t surprise me if it’s a little bit lower because again I think that there will be some situations where he’s playing more so to occupy attention rather than be the playmaker himself but Leonard Williams has built a career on being the guy who makes the play at least some of the time I don’t think you get away from that completely not that 6 and 1 half sacks is a lot but it would be a pretty significant amount for a guy in this defense where I expect there to be a lot of creative stuff going on however when it comes to pressures I think things are going to be on the downswing just a little bit 22 which is not radically different than what he did last year don’t get me wrong like I think he had 23 last year according to pfr in 18 games and by the way when I’m talking about pressure numbers in this video I’m talking about pfr because that’s the site that I use for defensive stuff so Leonard Williams 22 pressures in let’s call it like 15 or 16 games he probably won’t play all 17 but I don’t think he’s going to suffer any significant injury he’ll just miss a game to wear or tear here or there and I think that with the rotation that we should have up front that’ll be good enough to justify the money we spent on him maybe it won’t be the case look going into 2026 that we feel that way when the number goes up but for now I think it will be fine okay so Byron Murphy Byron Murphy the second um this one’s tough because obviously we invested a high pick in him we really like him we think he’s going to be a really good player but from college we know he is not really the finisher he’s not really the guy who makes the play he’s the guy who sets the play up he’s kind of like when that year we had Clowney Clowney was our best pass rusher by far that year but he only had I think three and a half sacks That season because getting the sack was not his game his game was disrupting and allowing somebody else to get in there and get the sack that’s kind of what Byron Murphy thei is he’s a guy who disrupts and then doesn’t actually make the play himself so even though I think he’ll play a good amount and I think he’ll be impactful I went with 25 tackles which seems like not a lot but you you look at his Texas tape you look at what he did in college and it’s not just how he’s been used it’s also the fact that he’s not that good of a tackler he has opportunities to make plays that he just doesn’t hit because the tackle slips out of his grasp so you put those two things together I think it’ll be like a tackle and a half maybe slightly more a game tackles for loss imagine he’ll make some backfield plays happen hard for me to believe that he isn’t utilized in that capacity at least some of the time I went with six tackles for loss for the same reasons as the low tackle count I don’t think it’ll be super high but when you’re making plays in the back field some sometimes you get a chance to make a play on a back or a quarterback who hasn’t had the opportunity to build up speed because they’re still in the back field so it’s a little bit easier and then with Sachs I just went with three and a half and I understand that people are going to look at that and say that’s low but again I’m not really looking for Byron Murphy to be the guy who finishes the play I’m just looking for him to be the guy who disrupts and I do think he will be disruptive I have 15 pressures for him that would probably be about one a game if he doesn’t play the entire season which players um I don’t know if it’s reasonable to expect any player to play every game on the defensive line in the modern NFL I think that there will probably be a push to kind of give especially a younger player who just came into the league a game off just for like load management purposes so 15 pressures on pfr is actually very good that would actually put him among the best defensive players in the league probably as long as he’s holding his own against the run as well and I would expect Leonard Williams and Byron Murphy to both play the well uh Play The Run quite well all right then we have Draymond Jones this one’s interesting I know because we don’t know what draymond’s going to do this year and it sounds like they’re going to be very flexible with him for the purposes of this video I put him on the defensive line but keep in mind he’s probably going to play on the edge some as well he’s going to be moving around in this defense he’s going to be jumping from spot to spot from position to position and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s used on the edge more more than he is on the defensive line but I don’t want to get away from this we need to be careful with the usage of our main two guys we cannot let Murphy and Williams play every snap or 90% of the snaps or even 80% of the snaps and expect them to be great at the end of the year it’s just not going to happen the Draymond Jones I have him getting 38 tackles he’ll get a lot more than Murphy I think because it’s a little bit more his game and he’s a veteran and he’ll be playing on the edge more which should create some more opportunities uh tackles for loss I went with six I’m feeling a decent season from Draymond Jones not enough to justify the money he’ll be making next year if he’s here which I don’t think he will be but he’ll be good enough to where we’re not mad at him anymore uh I went with five and a half sacks playing on the edge occasionally is going to help but playing with guys like a Leonard guys like Leonard Williams and like Byron Murphy is going to help as well and 15 pressures so he’ll have a good year it won’t be radically different from what he last year honestly but big reason why that is is because there’s fewer opportunities for him now because he is on a deeper defensive line with the addition of Byron Murphy and he has the whole season playing behind Leonard Williams okay the next backup on the defensive line would be Mike Morris and I feel like there was a plan to utilize him quite a bit last year but then he got hurt so I’m going to say this year obviously it’s not going to be like it was last year where he had a lot of opportunity this year he might not but you look at this we need somebody else on this defensive line at the three Tech spot to step up I don’t think Williams and Murphy and then Draymond Jones coming in off the bench sometime is going to be enough so I am looking to Mike Morris to do something so I’m going to say 20 tackles I’m going to go with two for loss I’m going to go with one and half sacks we’re going to keep things modest he’s not some super high prolific player he’s not going to be somebody who comes in here and just dominates he’s just going to be part of a rotation and his presence should at least allow us to have some freedom to really rotate our players and I’ll go with the five pressures again pfr pressures they’re much harder to get and that gets us to the nose tackle group here and we’ve got three of them I do think that a guy like jiren Reed might play uh three Tech a little bit this year because um we have three nose tackles and it the need might come a little bit more as a defensive end but either way we’re going to lean on Reed a lot I don’t think the other two nose tackles we have are guys that we’re looking to use a ton of they’re just going to be spot Duty and Reed’s going to be the main guy unless either we don’t like how small he is because we have a new defense or if he just shows that he doesn’t have any gas left in the tank which is very possible Reed’s getting up there he’s been in this league a while so I’m going to go with 45 tackles I’m going to assume that he holds up fairly well kind of like like how he did last season uh it wouldn’t shock me if that number went down a decent amount but it seems to me that moving to nose tackle rejuvenated him so let’s roll with it so 45 tackles would be pretty strong uh five tackles for loss not going to be anything huge in the backfield uh that knows tackle stuff where he doesn’t have to worry as much about penetration really did him well also went with five sacks which would be a perfectly respectable number from a nose tackle uh would be a little bit less than what he had last year which by the way Reed’s not going to be able to replicate what he did last year last year he was playing like waren sap early in the season before he ran out of gas that’s not something we can replicate that’s not reasonable to expect and then we have pressures I went with 17 basically won a game seems reasonable to me it’s part of his skill set even if he is playing at nose tackle and we saw it last year I don’t think it’s going to completely go away uh these last two guys are the other nose tackle I don’t expect a ton here I went with 14 tackles from Young we are going to have to use him a decent amount he’s not just an afterthought on this team because Reed is older and is probably going to need to offer reinforcements at the defensive end spot a little bit um but I’m not expecting a ton here one tackle for loss penetration is not really his game pressure is not his game so zero sacks and one QB pressure and it just kind of happens by fluke Cameron young is not a get to the quarterback kind of guy that’s just not his game and it’s fine and then Jonathan henkins who we brought in from Dallas last year pretty good signing pretty interesting to me um I feel like he’s going to end up not playing that much I feel like we’re going to get enough between Reed and young to where hins only has to play occasionally he might even be inactive for a lot of games nose tackles don’t quite have the impact they used to so I’m just going to go with eight tackles he plays occasionally maybe gets activated for injury stuff and and no real Splash plays zero pressure zero sacks again it’s not really his game and I don’t think he’s going to play enough maybe he gets like one pressure at some point but I’m not expecting anything significant and that gets us to our totals here which I mean I think that if we get 22 sacks and 75 pfr pressures out of our defensive line we’re doing very well got to be in tandem with other things that would be a good start that would make me feel like we’re on the right track so let me know what you think down below let me know how you feel about this that’s how I see things breaking out on this defensive line so another prediction video should be coming out tomorrow if not it’ll be coming out very soon see you guys later go Hawks and this is one of the strengths of the team we need this part of the team to be good or else I don’t see how this team has a very good season see you guys later

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