Seattle Seahawks roster, depth chart: 3 underrated 2025 players

Pete Carroll is one of the most impactful figures in Seattle sports history, so when the mutual decision was made for Carroll to move on from his position as the Seahawks’ head coach following the 2023 season, anybody replacing him was going to have a tough road in following a guy who completely redefined the franchise on and off the field.

The team took its time in deciding on Carroll’s replacement, hiring Mike Macdonald on Jan. 31, 2024 — three weeks after Carroll “stepped down.” The former Baltimore Ravens defensive coordinator had put together great units on that side of the ball both in the Charm City, and for Jim Harbaugh’s Michigan Wolverines in 2021. Macdonald seemed to have all the attributes to lead a team at the highest level, but even so, moving to an entirely new environment is no small thing.

Overall, Macdonald’s first season struck an interesting balance between frustration and encouragement. The offense floundered under Ryan Grubb, who has been replaced by Klint Kubiak. Geno Smith was cast aside in a trade to the Las Vegas Raiders, where he’ll be reunited with Carroll, the man who saved his NFL career. Sam Darnold, Smith’s replacement, had an unexpectedly great season for the Minnesota Vikings last season, and the marriage between Kubiak and Darnold would seem in principle to be just about perfect.

Will Year 2 of the Macdonald regime bring the first postseason slot for the Seahawks since 2022, and the first playoff win since Jan. 5, 2020? If that is to happen, everyone will have to be at their best — not just the prominent names.

In the continuation of our “Hidden Gems” series, we look at three Secret Superstars for these Seahawks — one underrated veteran, one underrated free-agent signing, and one underrated draft pick — who could help bring back the glory days.

Underrated Veteran: Safety Coby Bryant

The 2024 season marked an interesting transition for Seattle’s defense. In the switch from Carroll to Macdonald, the Seahawks picked up a lot of more advanced concepts that Macdonald adopted through his career, and really perfected in 2023.

When players have a new defense to learn, it always takes a minute for everything to hit the right way. That was the case for Macdonald’s Seahawks, who ranked 15th in Defensive DVOA in the first half of the season, and jumped to seventh from Week 10 through the end. Fans should absolutely be excited about what things could look like in 2025 given Macdonald’s own defensive genius, and the talent on the roster.

One guy who really started to show up and show out in the second half of the season was defensive back Coby Bryant, who has seen his own career become a series of transitions. Selected in the fourth round of the 2022 draft out of Cincinnati as an outside cornerback, Bryant played mostly slot defender in his rookie season, and had far fewer overall reps in 2023.

But with the Macdonald move, Bryant finally found his ideal spot in Seattle — the last line of defense as a deep safety. Injuries pushed Bryant to the fore on that role in Week 7, and overall last season, Bryant allowed 20 catches on 25 targets for 213 yards, 57 yards after the catch, one touchdown, four interceptions, two pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 75.9 — the lowest for any Seahawks starting defensive back.

In conjunction with veteran Julian Love, Bryant showed a real acuity for the constant safety shifts from pre- to post-snap in Macdonald’s defense, and his intelligent opportunism was all over the tape. Bryant didn’t seem out of step with all of those tactical requirements, and he could play single-high just as well.

“Coby is a great example of how we want to build this thing,” Macdonald said in December. “Come in, work, compete, do the things every day, stack all the great reps, get the confidence, get an opportunity, take advantage and run with it. Then let your abilities go from there.”

Former Seahawks receiver D.K. Metcalf was even more impressed, giving Bryant the nickname “Ed Reed.”

“I know it’s a stretch, but just hear me out,” Metcalf said last year. “No offense to Ed Reed or anything, but just the way that [Bryant] tracks the ball, he’s always near the ball. Just going back to when he was a rookie, he’s always had a nose for the ball, whether that was punching it out, catching picks or making an open-field tackle. I just thought he had the complete package to be a great defensive player.”

Well, let’s not go all the way there just yet, but it is good to know that in Bryant, the Seahawks now have one of the most important things any NFL team can hope for on its roster — the young, legit deep-third defender that allows coaches to scheme and players to roam elsewhere with confidence.

Underrated Free-Agent Signing: EDGE DeMarcus Lawrence

DeMarcus Lawrence isn’t really underrated in a career sense. Selected in the second round of the 2014 draft out of Boise State, the 6’3” 265-pound Lawrence has put up 69 sacks and 475 total pressures in a remarkable 11-year career with the Dallas Cowboys. And the Seahawks certainly weren’t underrating him when they gave him a three-year, $32.5 million contract with $18 million guaranteed this offseason.

But you may have to pick through your memory banks a bit if you want Lawrence highlights. Last season, he missed all but the first four games with a foot injury, and given that he turned 33 on Apr. 28, you may wonder just how much Lawrence still has in the tank.

If you do watch his 2024 reps, when he had three sacks and nine total pressures on just 89 pass-rush snaps, it’s pretty clear that Lawrence’s combination of power, gap speed, technique, alignment versatility, and pure effort was still a major factor when he was out there. This was especially true in Week 1 against the Cleveland Browns, when Lawrence had two sacks and seven total pressures, and it was basically impossible to stop him.

At the owners meetings in April, Macdonald laid out exactly how he sees Lawrence contributing to an edge group that already has Boye Mafe, Uchenna Nwosu, and Derick Hall.

“Really excited about him,” Macdonald said. “He compliments our room really well. He’s a heck of a six-technique [aligned over the tight end, or just outside the offensive tackle]. He’s a disruptor. He plays the way we want to play technique-wise. He’s really, really smart. He creates more negative plays on early downs to get us in more advantageous situations [third-and-long]. And then obviously the pass rush element. He fits right in.”

Reports indicate that Lawrence has been participating in minicamps, so the foot injury appears to be a thing of the past. Macdonald is one of the NFL’s better minds when it comes to varying pressure concepts, so if he sees a specific role for a productive veteran like Lawrence, that could be a very big thing in 2025. Maybe Lawrence won’t be a 10-sack guy (he’s only totaled double-digit sacks twice in his career), but that’s not really the point. Every great defensive line has one guy who glues everything together, and Lawrence certainly has the chops to get that done.

Underrated Draft Pick: RB Damien Martinez

The 2024 Seahawks had a reasonably productive running back duo in Kenneth Walker III and Zach Charbonnet. In some ways, that is. Those two guys combined for 15 rushing touchdowns and 11 runs of 15 or more yards, but there’s only so far you can take the committee thing when it comes to actual yards gained. Last season, Walker gained 573 yards on 153 carries, Charbonnet totaled 569 yards on 135 carries, and overall, Seattle’s 1,627 rushing yards was the NFL’s fifth-lowest total. Only the Las Vegas Raiders and the New York Jets had fewer rushing first downs than Seattle’s 88, and this is not where Mike Macdonald wants things to be.

At the scouting combine, Macdonald shone the light on the positive side, hoping that new offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak’s run concepts will help.

“I think we’ve got three really good football players, good runners. They can all do all three things. Play all three downs for us. I think Ken and Zach’s styles complement one another. Kenny [Macintosh has] shown the ability to run wide zone really well, too. So it’s going to be fun to see how the reps shake out throughout the year and the roles we have for him.

“But keeping Kennedy Polamalu as our running back coach was awesome for us, and he did such a great job with those guys this year. And I know Klint has a great vision for all three backs on our offense. And, excited to work with him when they come back.”

That’s all well and good, but with the 225th pick in the seventh round, the Seahawks stole a guy who could be a major addition to that run game in Miami’s Damien Martinez. Last season, Martinez gained 1,006 yards and scored 10 touchdowns on just 160 carries, forcing 42 missed tackles, averaging 4.46 yards per carry after contact, and gaining 15 or more yards on 13 of those carries. Martinez was dinged in the draft process because he’s more of a sustainer than an obviously explosive back at the second and third levels, but that could be just what this offense needs. And Martinez does have more wiggle in the inside zone reps he had at Miami than some may think — he’s an intelligent headbanger.

“I think you know that,” Macdonald said at the end of the draft, when asked if Martinez fits the style of run game he prefers. “I think you respect that about him, about guys that can run the ball physically, downhill. Had a lot of great guys come through this building that have run it like that. Nod to those people. Just again, really excited about the guys we have on our roster. Come in and come kick butt with the rest of them. It’s going to be a great competition. But we’re really excited about him.”

While Martinez was more of a gap and inside zone runner at Miami than a pure outside zone guy, every run game has different wrinkles. Last season, the New Orleans Saints under Kubiak ran outside zone 200 times, the fifth-highest rate in the league. But they were also conversant in inside zone (77 carries), and there were enough gap and power concepts to tell you that Kubiak isn’t just going to lean on one thing.

There’s also the fact that in 2022 and 2023, when he was at Oregon State, Martinez ran a lot more zone concepts, and he was just fine with that.

“I know it’s a lot similar to kind of what I ran when I was back in the Pacific Northwest with Oregon State,” Martinez said of Seattle’s run concepts after he was drafted. “It will definitely be good for me to run the zone.”

Martinez also said this when asked to describe his overall style:

“Physical runner. You’ve got another Beast Mode 2.0 coming up there. Get ready to see it.”

Well, that would be nice.

(All advanced metrics courtesy of Pro Football Focus and Sports Info Solutions).