Barkevious Mingo is the new Bruce Irvin. Is that a good thing?

Barkevious Mingo is a much lower risk with a similar reward

Mingo has five years under his belt in the league, so the Seahawks have much more to go on than they did with Irvin. We’ll start with one glaring difference. Irvin had 53 starts in his first five seasons. Mingo has just 23. Another major difference is sacks. Irvin had 29 in his first five years, while Mingo only managed nine. That is a huge difference, especially for someone signed explicitly to help on the pass rush.

But here is where things start to look up. Irvin had 3,266 plays in his five years. Mingo had considerably fewer opportunities. At its worst, he had just 47 snaps at linebacker for the Patriots in 2016. Overall, Mingo has been on the field for only 2,137 plays.

It’s certainly true that if he had played up to expectations, he wouldn’t have seen his opportunities drop off the face of the earth with the Browns in his third season. His snap counts dropped by a bit over 400 in 2015. Then he had the nightmare season with New England (although he did get a Super Bowl ring out of it). The Colts had more faith in him. He rewarded that faith with two sacks. He did force three fumbles and recover three, which is a pretty neat trick.

Mingo is certainly a lower risk than Irvin was. Seattle has been, shall we say, stingy this off-season. Mingo’s guaranteed money is $3.2 million, a bit pricey for the Seahawks of 2018. But that’s nothing compared to the value of a first round pick. That’s one plus. If Mingo produces similar numbers to Irvin, that’s a big win for the Seahawks.