Seattle Seahawks: 15 best free agent acquisitions of all time

Bradley McDougald has only been with the Seahawks for the last two seasons. But just imagine how bad things might have been for Seattle during the 2018 season if McDougald had not been playing his home games at CenturyLink Field.

To be honest, McDougald was probably never as good as the first four games of 2018 when he was playing alongside Earl Thomas. Thomas is a great player who makes others around him better. To McDougald’s credit, though, he also allowed Thomas to roam a bit freer as well.

Seattle got lucky when they signed McDougald from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers before the 2017 season, though. To get the safety on a one-year deal for $2 million was a steal. No one seemed to know how good McDougald was or how well he would fit in Pete Carroll’s defense.

Last offseason, McDougald was signed to a three-year extension by Seattle and now makes a bit more than $4 million a season on average. He is worth it.

McDougald has been so good since first being signed that he has let Seattle take a chance on fellow safeties Tedric Thompson and Delano Hill in that they would develop into solid starters beside him. Thompson and Hill weren’t always great last year, but McDougald helped bail them out of trouble a lot, too.

Partly, I have McDougald on this list not because how important he has been to the Seahawks the last two years, but how important he will be in the next few as well. If I do this same list in 10 years, one might safely assume McDougald cracks the top-5 of best Seahawk free agent signings ever.