{"id":23550,"date":"2025-07-20T10:13:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T10:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/23550\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T10:13:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T10:13:07","slug":"leonard-williams-among-3-seattle-seahawks-in-espns-top-10-position-players-survey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/23550\/","title":{"rendered":"Leonard Williams among 3 Seattle Seahawks in ESPN\u2019s top 10 position players survey"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Seattle Seahawks<\/a> defense had considerable representation in this year\u2019s edition of ESPN\u2019s annual survey of top 10 players by position<\/a>, as voted by league coaches, scouts, and executives. This is an upgrade from the 2024 offseason, when the Seahawks\u2019 lone representative was Devon Witherspoon. <\/p>\n

Who\u2019s made this year\u2019s list? We start off with the Big Cat himself, Leonard Williams. One ballot actually had him as high as No. 2.<\/p>\n

Leonard Williams – No. 6 defensive tackle<\/p>\n

First-year Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald helped catapult Williams, who took full advantage of his matchups to have a banner season.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis play finally matched his abilities last season,\u201d a veteran NFL coach said. \u201cHe was dominant. Others have been better than him in previous years, but he always had a high ceiling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Williams posted career highs in quarterback hits (28) and tackles for loss (16), an impressive feat in Year 10. He added 64 tackles, 3 passes defended and a 92-yard interception return for a touchdown.<\/p>\n

\u201cHas rare length, range and power,\u201d an NFL coordinator said. \u201cWas nice to see him put it all together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dexter Lawrence, Chris Jones, Jalen Carter, Jeffery Simmons, and Quinnen Williams were all ranked ahead of Williams in the aggregate total. <\/p>\n

Next up is a first-time entrant into this survey. Julian Love is entering his third season with the Seahawks after a great second season, and he cracked the safety list at No. 10.<\/p>\n

Julian Love – No. 10 safety<\/p>\n

Love has used his two-year stint in Seattle to catapult his career, racking up 7 interceptions, 22 pass deflections and 232 total tackles. His 21.8% ball-hawking rate topped all safeties with at least 50 targets this past season.<\/p>\n

\u201cRange, dart, combo of physicality and ball production. Has developed into a high-end player,\u201d an NFC executive said. \u201cRemarkable for a guy that was primarily a corner in college.\u201d<\/p>\n

The money parallels the on-field ascension. After four years with the Giants, Seattle signed Love to a two-year, $12 million deal<\/a> in March 2023, only to extend him for three years and $33 million<\/a> 16 months later.<\/p>\n

After the Seahawks moved on from Jamal Adams and Quandre Diggs, Love\u2019s role increased and he has flourished thus far.<\/p>\n

Lastly, \u2018Spoon is still considered a top 10 corner, although he\u2019s moved down one spot from last year. <\/p>\n

Devon Witherspoon – No. 10 cornerback<\/p>\n

Witherspoon has back-to-back Pro Bowls to match two consecutive top 10s to start his career \u2014 achieving the latter in close fashion. Witherspoon won a tiebreaker with former No. 1 Jalen Ramsey<\/a> for the 10th spot.<\/p>\n

Statistically, Witherspoon wasn\u2019t as disruptive as the previous year. His pass deflections dropped from 16 to nine, sacks from 3.0 to 1.0. But he\u2019s the classic tone-setter, the type of player you need to see in person.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s stout at the line, with a 90.0 run defense grade last season that ranked third among corners by Pro Football Focus. He also recorded 66 solo tackles, a solid number for a corner.<\/p>\n

\u201cExtremely urgent, aggressive, excellent top-down speed from the perimeter or out of the slot,\u201d an NFL personnel evaluator said. \u201cViolent tackler, lower body twitch, good blitzer, disruptive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Added an NFL coordinator: \u201cBetter nickel than outside corner in my opinion but he makes splash plays. You need to account for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you haven\u2019t noticed by now, the Seahawks didn\u2019t have anyone in the top 10 on offense and it\u2019s hard to argue against it. There were several Seahawks on both sides of the ball who did receive votes, including Kenneth Walker III at running back, Charles Cross at offensive tackle, Ernest Jones IV at off-ball linebacker, Jaxon Smith-Njigba at wide receiver, and Riq Woolen at cornerback.<\/p>\n

In case you\u2019re wondering, neither Sam Darnold nor his Seahawks predecessor Geno Smith received any votes for top 10 quarterback status.<\/p>\n

It all seems fair to me from a Seahawks perspective! If all goes right, many of those names who received votes but didn\u2019t get ranked (or, in Darnold\u2019s case, any votes) could find themselves on next year\u2019s top 10 list. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Seattle Seahawks defense had considerable representation in this year\u2019s edition of ESPN\u2019s annual survey of top 10…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[21105,352,15635,424,17165,417,21104,349,4697,3751,419,17159,1839,21106,17166,99,6816,1867,5352],"class_list":["post-23550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-among","tag-espn","tag-field","tag-front-page","tag-gulls","tag-in","tag-leonard","tag-nfl","tag-players","tag-position","tag-s","tag-seahawks","tag-seattle","tag-seattle-seahawks-game-analysis","tag-seattle-seahawks-news","tag-sports","tag-survey","tag-top","tag-williams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}