The Seahawks finished the 2018 regular season 10-6 and made it to the playoffs. Who were the best players in each phase of Seattle’s team?
The fact that the Seahawks made it to the playoffs in 2018 was extraordinary. Prior to the season there were a lot of national pundits who thought 1) Seattle would be lucky to win more than four games, 2) Pete Carroll would be spending his last season in Seattle and 3) team morale was awful.
None of the above turned out to be true. Instead, Carroll and general manager John Schneider re-tooled the roster and got rid of players like Richard Sherman who were becoming cancers in the locker room. Carroll is great with young players and the 2018 team had a young roster. One plus one equals Seattle is in the postseason.
Seattle had a bunch of players play bigger roles on this year’s team. This group included players like Bradley McDougald who 12s knew was talented but was mostly playing behind Kam Chancellor and Earl Thomas at safety. McDougald got his chance to start this year and became a Pro Bowl-type safety and a team leader. McDougald is signed in Seattle through 2020. This is a great thing.
But the Seahawks also had veterans like Duane Brown play at a high level. Brown, like most of the other players on the roster, wants to play in Seattle and has bought into Carroll’s team first philosophy. And a lot of these guys are under contract for a few more years.
I am going to cheat a bit on this list of MVPs, though. I am not going with Russell Wilson on offense. Doing so would be obvious and show little imagination. Clearly, Wilson is the most important players on the Seahawks. Nearly every quarterback in their team’s most important player. Wilson was once again great, however. But there was one player on offense who consistently made differences in games at key times.
Here are the Seahawks MVPs on offense, defense and special teams for the regular season of 2018.
Offense
MVP: Tyler Lockett
Why?
No Seattle player had more important explosive plays than Lockett had for the Seahawks in 2018. Time and again, just like Lockett had against the Cardinals on Sunday, the receiver had a huge play downfield that either scored a touchdown itself or set Seattle up for a key score.
Russell Wilson's pass to Tyler Lockett was a thing of beauty... Just dropped it out of the sky right into his hands. #Seahawks pic.twitter.com/XpjkZmDd9h
— Samuel Gold (@SamuelRGold) December 25, 2018
And what Lockett was able to do on 57 receptions is pretty incredible. Lockett was targeted 70 times or one less time than 2017. In fact, Lockett is a bit of a metronome each season with targets. In his four year career, his target amount has gone 69 to 66 to 71 to 70. Seattle has always needed to get Lockett the ball more than they have. This year he showed them why.
Wilson’s quarterback rating when targeting Lockett this year was 158.3. I assume that no quarterback and receiver has ever produced a better season because 158.3 is a perfect QBR. Lockett only didn’t catch the ball 14 times when Wilson threw it to him.
https://twitter.com/FO_ASchatz/status/1079790834881572867
Lockett caught 10 touchdown passes, tied for sixth in the NFL. And Lockett’s 10 was more touchdowns than players such as Julio Jones, Larry Fitzgerald and Michael Thomas. Lockett also had 965 yards receiving, 301 yards better than his previous best in 2015.
Honorable mention
Chris Carson could have been the MVP of the offense but he actually was hurt by what Mike Davis was able to do when Carson was injured in a couple of weeks. For instance, Davis ran for over 100 yards against the Cardinals in week four, a game Carson missed.
Defense
MVP: Jarran Reed
Why?
Reed supplied the kind of interior pass rush in 2018 that the Seahawks have not had in many years. Seattle has been pretty successful at getting to opposing quarterbacks since Carroll became head coach in 2010 but a lot of sacks came from defensive ends. Defensive tackle pressure has been an issue for a while.
Reed nearly single-handily fixed that this year. Entering his third season, Reed had a combined three sacks and five tackles for loss. Reed was a second-round pick out of college, though, so Seattle always wanted more from him. The defensive tackle fulfilled his potential and more this year.
Reed tied for second among all NFL tackles with 10.5 sacks. He also had 12 tackles for loss. In fact, Reed played so effectively as the season wore on that it made defensive end Frank Clark‘s job somewhat easier. Clark had 14 sacks but he wouldn’t have gotten that many if not for Reed eating up blockers in the middle.
Linebacker Bobby Wagner is Seattle’s best defensive player. But let me ask you this, imagine an interior of the Seahawks defensive line without Reed? This is why Reed is the defensive MVP for Seattle in 2018.
Honorable mentions
Clearly, Clark and Wagner should be on this list for several seasons to come. Clark will be a free agent after this year but Seattle will either extend or franchise him. Not do so would be criminal. Wagner is under contract though next season. Reed is also a free agent after 2019. Ouch.
And Bradley McDougald should be mentioned here too. I talked about him earlier in this article, but his experience and talent made a very young Seattle secondary much better.
Special teams
MVP: Michael Dickson
Why?
If you have to ask the question of “why?” here then you obviously have not watched any Seahawks games this season. Dickson, the rookie punter for Seattle, was chosen in the draft to make the young defense better and he did just that.
Forget Sunday’s terrible game against the Cardinals when Dickson had one punt blocked and one altered. Blocking isn’t in his job description and his offensive line let him down. And sure, he outkicked his coverage twice but he was probably just trying to get rid of the ball.
In 2018, Dickson was second in the NFL in yards per punt and sixth in net yards per punt. Actually, it was the Cardinals game that kept him from being much higher in net yards per punt because for a lot of the season, Dickson led the league in this important category.
A punter has really one job to do. That is to kick to the other team in hopes of putting the other team in poor field position while also not allowing any, or at least not very many, yards on a return. Dickson is a Pro Bowl punter this season for one big reason: He is great at flipping field position and not allowing a ton of return yards.
The great thing is that Dickson should continue to get better. He cares about his craft and constantly works at it. Dickson is a perfectionist and will continue to be. Seattle made a smart choice by moving up in the 2018 draft to select their punter for the next 10 years. He is a defensive weapon.