Seahawks 25 best players, #19 Garry Gilliam

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 7 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 19th Best Player On The Seahawks Roster Is….

#19: Garry Gilliam, LT

You may be thinking that NONE of the Seahawks offensive linemen belong on this list, because of how poorly they performed the first third of last season and again in the season-ending loss to Carolina in the playoffs. It’s true that they had their struggles, and even Gilliam himself showed some growing pains. But when you look at what he did overall, and the potential that his athletic skill-set foreshadows, it’s easy to get excited about his future contributions to the team.

When Russell Okung packed his bags and left for Denver as a free agent there was some panic among the fan base, but not at team headquarters. The Seahawks had been grooming Gilliam as a left tackle ever since signing him as an undrafted free agent following the 2014 draft. He was thrown in at right tackle after the preseason struggles of Justin Britt last year and performed admirably.

While he needs to develop as a run blocker, his ability to pass protect is where his potential really shines. The former tight end shows remarkable athletic ability for the tackle position, especially in his ability to move laterally. He’s spent the offseason working diligently on left-tackle-specific drills to get ready for the transition back to where he started out as a rookie.

There’s still a lot of hand-wringing and consternation about the state of the Seahawks offensive line, and perhaps no one has more pressure on him to perform than Gilliam in his new role as starting left tackle.

Next: With Baldwin signed, who's next?

This ranking is based more on sheer athletic ability and potential than production. I’m banking on him becoming a solid, long-term answer at LT.