Seahawks 25 best players, #13/14 The Kickers!!
By Dan Viens
The Seattle Seahawks roster is generally regarded as one of the best in the NFL top to bottom, but what about the talent level within the roster? Our co-editor Dan Viens takes a shot at ranking the team’s Top 25 players in order.
(PART 12 OF 25 IN A SERIES)
NFL Network does their Top 100 NFL players list every year, and this off season we’ve seen our share of analysts taking a crack at ranking the best rosters in the league. As we enter into the dog days of the off season, with the start of training camp still over a month away, I wanted to see what it would look like if I tried to rank the best 25 players the Seahawks have.
It was harder than I thought.
The top 10 was pretty easy. I would suspect most would end up with the same 10-12 names in some order or another. After that it gets dicey.
Among the challenges, how do you figure in the rookies and players who have never played a down in Seattle?
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My criteria was wide-ranging. Sometimes I went with pure talent, and other times I gave more weight to the players importance to the team. And in certain cases the players role…….played a role in my ranking. When in doubt, however, I would just ask myself “who’s the better player?”
So here we go……
The 13th and 14th Best Players On The Seahawks Roster Are….
#13 & #14: Jon Ryan, P and Steven Hauschka, K
Yes! The kickers!
I’ll get right to the point; they belong in the middle of this list because they’re among the best at what they do in the league and have been for a long time.
Also, both have been models of consistency, and both have been crucial to the team’s success.
Hauschka is entering his 6th season with the Seahawks after beginning his career in Baltimore and Denver. All he’s done here is make 88.8% of his field goals and 97.2% of his extra points. That includes 39 of 47 from 40-49 yards, and 14 of 21 from over 50.
Early in his career he had issues with not getting kickoffs deep enough, but that’s no longer a problem. He consistently gets the ball into the end zone now, helping Seattle become one of the better kick coverage teams in the NFL.
Meanwhile, his colleague Ryan looks like he’ll end his career in Seattle after putting in 8 years as a Seahawk already. Ryan just signed a new 4 year, $10 million dollar contract. His consistency of pinning team’s inside the 10 has been an asset for the Hawks league-leading defense, but he’s also capable of booming a 70 yarder when needed to flip the field when the offense stalls deep in their own end.
Also, Ryan has become one of those rare entities, a kicker who’s popular with the fans.
If you want to question either of these players placements on this list just ask yourself one question: How comfortable would I be replacing either of these guys with an unknown quantity?
Next: With Baldwin signed, who's next in line?
It’s that comfort of knowing that the kicking game is in such good hands, er…….. feet….. that shows their true value.