Seahawks Roster Ranked 1 to 53

Seahawks Roster: Depth Chart Pieces

43. Ty Powell– Still smarting over the poor decision to cut intriguing safety Ronald Martin last year in hopes he would clear waivers (he was immediately scooped up by the Jets), the team wisely took a less risky path with Powell. Though he is likely to find himself on the inactive list on most game days in 2016, Powell could contribute immediately on special teams if needed while being groomed for a future role as a member of the vaunted Seahawk secondary, just as the team did with Deshean Shead.

44. Brock Coyle (41)– What you see is what you get with Coyle. He offers above average special teams play and is the consummate backup middle linebacker. He gets by on will, guile, toughness and grit and needed all of it to fend off Steve Longa and Kache Palacio this year to cement his place on the roster. You’ll always get 100% of what limited ability Coyle has to offer.

45. DeAndre Elliot– Had this player been kept instead of Tharold Simon, I’d be more excited about it. Instead, Elliot’s unlikely path to the roster came at the expense of Tye Smith. Consider it a wash. The Colorado State rookie’s aggressiveness shone through in the preseason and we’ll just have to wait and see whether he can take the forward steps in progression that so many others before him at cornerback have failed to accomplish.

46. Drew Ferris– Ferris is a long snapper and the reason team scouts are team scouts. It’s fun and easy to project Jarran Reed’s skill set and future, but it’s hard to determine which long snappers are possible NFL quality players. I’ll defer to the personnel pros on this one. I have no idea how good or bad Ferris is and if he was pumping gasoline directly across from me I wouldn’t know it. Which is pretty wild if you think about it. Can you imagine being a NFL player and yet not be recognized by anyone, anywhere? Every day of life would be like a Twilight Zone episode. I can’t decide if that would suck or be the coolest thing ever.

47. Garrison Smith– Picked up on waivers after the final cuts, the 6’1” 294lb defensive tackle seems to physically resemble recently waived Jordan Hill. He will provide depth at a position that looks relatively strong at the moment and could find himself on the gameday inactive list more often than not. Smith did impress in the preseason, ranking as profootballfocus’ highest ranked interior lineman, with 15 tackles and two sacks.

48. Tani Tupou– Thanks to a trade nullified by a failed physical for a seventh safety, Tupou was able to cash in a lottery ticket for one spot on the 53-man roster and is now the lone fullback on the team.  How long his stay lasts is up for debate, but he’s here now and may even play some in week one versus Miami.

49. Dewey McDonald– The Seahawks traded for McDonald on the cutdown to 53 day because special teams were fairly atrocious in the preseason and this type of trade previously worked out well with Kelcie McCray, who immediately helped in kick/punt coverage and later entrenched himself as a legitimate backup at safety. John Schneider is hoping to catch lightning in a bottle again with a similar move here, as special teams are something McDonald may be able to help shore up quickly in Seattle.

50. Steven Terrell– It feels like Terrell has been around for ten years. I’ve never been awed, impressed or kept awake by anything he has done on the field, but the team can’t seem to find anybody else that can adequately back up Earl Thomas and Terrell at least knows the playbook, I suppose.

51. Trevone Boykin– It’s real simple. If Russell Wilson gets hurt significantly, the season is over. Boykin, the UDFA from a spread offense, needs AT LEAST a full year in the Seahawks system to do nothing but learn, retain and regurgitate information in a pro huddle- never mind refine his throwing mechanics, which tend to get lazy at times. He’ll be much more of a legitimate backup QB option for Wilson in year two and beyond if he continues to put in the required work, but it is curtains for this team if he sees the field for a substantial length of time in 2016.

52. George Fant– Tom Cable just isn’t happy unless he has at least one lineman on his roster that has no idea how to play football in the trenches. Is this some sort of loophole resulting in job security that he has created whereby Cable convinces his bosses that only he can turn an impossible project into a serviceable player over the course of four years? Why do we keep falling for this farce? There have been too many of these kooky experiments and not nearly enough of them have panned out to warrant fleshing out these silly trials on the active roster. The offensive linemen that look the best on this team are the guys that PLAYED OFFENSIVE LINE IN COLLEGE. Outside the box thinking is great but when it consistently falls flat, get back in the box.

Having said all that, Fant seems willing to learn, capable of applying what is being taught to him and is of course a massively athletic ball of clay. He’ll need at least a year of technique and muscle memory work to even get to a place where his play can even be fairly evaluated. That’s what the practice squad is for, but evidently the team was afraid someone else would claim Fant before they could stash him away.

Next: Give Jeremy Lane his Props for Joining Kaepernick

53. Alex Collins– I just don’t understand what everyone else claims to see in Collins. Others describe a quick-footed, early-down bruiser with surprisingly good hands in the mold of Marshawn Lynch. I see an indecisive, painfully slow running back coupled with below average vision that struggles to press the line in the ZBS and is unable to see, get and shoot through quickly-closing holes. As Tom Cable once described Robert Turbin’s feet and running style (actually, Turbin’s a much better comp for Collins’ talents than Lynch), Collins is “stomping snakes” out there. It’s not a compliment.