Seahawks 2019 roster projection before preseason game 4
By Lee Vowell
Secondary
Starters at corner: Tre Flowers and Shaquill Griffin
Starters at safety: Bradley McDougald and Tedric Thompson
Depth at corner: Akeem King, Neiko Thorpe and Jamar Taylor
Depth at safety: Marquise Blair, Ugo Amadi and DeShawn Shead
Cuts: Kalan Reed, Simeon Thomas, Jeremy Boykins, Lano Hill and Shalom Luani
The corner starters are set. The safeties probably are for at least early in the season. 12s really want Blair to take control of the safety spot opposite McDougald but we aren’t there yet. Blair has been too banged up this preseason with a back injury to say, “He’s the man.” While Thompson wasn’t great in 2018, he also wasn’t terrible. He is the starter for now.
Griffin says he has improved but he has gotten beat a few times already this preseason. It could simply be he isn’t good enough to ever be a number one corner. Whether he’s actually better than his underwhelming season of last year or not will be evident early in the year.
Flowers hasn’t been thrown at against enough in preseason to see how much better he is than last year. That might actually be a telling sign.
The real battles in the secondary are at slot corner. Someone has to replace Justin Coleman. It could be veteran Taylor, or less-veteran King or rookie Amadi. Taylor has been good this preseason and a veteran presence would be good among a young group. Amadi has shown a lot of promise, though. My feeling is Taylor makes the team, King gets a lot of starts at slot corner but by the end of the season Amadi is the long-term starter there.