Seahawks: Who is the Defensive MVP?
By Ben Renner
The Seahawks have been known as a defensive team in recent years. On a defensive roster still loaded with talent, who’s the most important to the team’s success?
Since 2012, the Seahawks have fielded one of the best defensive units in NFL history. They reached their apex in 2013, when the Legion of Boom and company rivaled the great defensive teams of the 2000 Baltimore Ravens and even the 1985 Chicago Bears. Annihilating one of the best offenses in history in Super Bowl 48 was their crowning achievement.
In 2016 and heading into 2017, the Seahawks defense hasn’t changed much since 2012. Gone is defensive coordinator Dan Quinn, who took the Atlanta Falcons to the Super Bowl last year as a head coach, and several supporting players have rotated out of the Seahawks roster and starting lineup. But the core of this defense has remained intact.
On a team full of defensive stars at every level, who’s the most indispensable? Let’s look at a few candidates:
Michael Bennett, Defensive End
Bennett rose to number 46 on NFL Network’s Top 100 Players entering 2017 with good reason. You can choose to trust these rankings every year or not, but when a defensive end with only five sacks cracks the top 50, you know he’s doing great things that don’t always show up on the stat sheet.
Bennett made the Pro Bowl and rose in the rankings after his 2016 season that was actually not as good (statistically) as his 2015 season. In 2015, Bennett made 33 tackles, including 10 sacks, while starting all 16 games for the Seahawks. In 2016, he made 24 tackles, five of them sacks, in 11 games. In both seasons routinely disrupted both run and pass plays.
And that’s why he could be the most valuable defensive player on the Seahawks defense. Whether or not he makes the tackle, his incredible ability to diagnose offensive plays from his pass-rushing position makes it much easier for everyone else behind him to make plays. He’s the first ingredient that causes chaos for opposing offenses.
If you watch his 2016 highlights, you’ll see his versatility as a run-stuffer and pass-rusher, able to diagnose plays and be exactly where the offense doesn’t want him to be: