Three Seahawks to Consider Liking (or think slightly positive of) in the post-Lofa Tatupu era

With Lofa Tatupu and Matt Hasselbeck gone, there seems to be a lot less to cheer about as PC boasts a team of mainly talented young players that have yet to prove themselves. To help ease the pain, here's what I think are a few underrated Seahawks that should either play a good season, have some strong upside in the long term, or are just flat out fun to like. Much to the dismay of Matt Swanson, two of my picks are what he described as 'solid choices' in filling the shoes* of Kelly Jenning's haterade.

Leroy Hill - Prominent ESPN writers who are never ever wrong have described Hill -along with Daryl Washington and NaVorro Bowman- as one of the three emerging linebackers in the NFC West. I'm not sure I would go that far as Hill is 4-5 years older than both of those guys, but Hill has reportedly had a great camp and has definitely put on a pretty good showing in preseason. He's been reading defenses well, made some good plays, and in general playing with the aggressive form that got him drafted in the first place. Hopefully this is him channeling his off-the-field problems into the game. But most importantly, his one-year signing makes him a low-risk gamble on a player that is still talented. As much as it hurts, cutting Lofa Tatupu makes more sense given Hill's prospect for decent veteran linebacker play this season.


Kam Chancellor - Another shiner in camp, Kam has had a huge presence in run support and had quite a few tackles for lost yardage in preseason games. At 6'3'' he looms over most other DBs and fulfills PC's vision of a monster strong safety. Given his performance thus far, I could see him having a strong first-season similar to the one Earl Thomas had last year. Hopefully he's benefited from watching Lawyer Milloy play last season and learning how NOT to play strong safety. Come on, Matt, have you ever seen Kelly Jennings -or many Seahawks DBs before him for that matter- hit like this or this? The closest Kelly Jennings could ever get to that is by paying Leonardo Dicaprio to break into his dreams and plant those memories (they call that 'inception' in the dream-trespassing-corporate-espionage industry).

Jon Ryan - Yes, I know what you're thinking: "Hurr hur what a punter omgwtfbbq!" The reality is that Jon Ryan actually had a relatively big and underrated impact on the successes of last season. He only had one touchback all of last season and ranked 5th amongst all punters in fair-catch percentage. During last season's final game against the Rams, he had four punts within the other teams 10-yard line. One of them was on the 2nd yard line. Also, he's in general awesome.

And unless you haven't already, you should already be liking -in some cases lusting- returning Seahawks Earl Thomas, Russell Okung (if the guy can stay healthy), Mike Williams, David Hawthorne, Leon Washington, Chris Clemmons, and Raheem Brock.



Your thoughts? Other nominees?

*Ironically, these would actually be small shoes as I believe Kelly Jennings wears a size 6 in young boys.