Seahawks draft: K’Lavon Chaisson may be perfect piece for Seattle
By Lee Vowell
The Seahawks need edge rushers. K’Lavon Chaisson from LSU might just have the upside to help Seattle chase down quarterbacks for years.
With their first pick in the 2020 NFL draft, the Seattle Seahawks will…probably not select an edge rusher. More likely, Seattle will go with an offensive lineman or wide receiver or kicker or something else no one expects the Seahawks to choose. But if Seattle was smart they would take K’Lavon Chaisson would be a perfect defensive piece for years.
Chaisson is 6’3″ and 255 pounds of pure athleticism. The good thing is he is still learning how to take all his speed and ability and transition that into an elite defender. Don’t get me wrong, he was very good for LSU last year with 6.5 sacks and 13.5 tackles-for-loss (the last bit led the National Champion Tigers) but he only played a couple of years in high school and two seasons in college.
I say his relative inexperience is good because if he joins the Seahawks he will learn the Pete Carroll defense and could be, by year two of his career, an elite edge rusher. Plus, because of Chaisson’s inexperience and bit of an injury history, he could easily be around for Seattle to take even if the Seahawks trade down to the first part of the second round.
About that injury history, though. Chaisson missed all but one game of his true sophomore season with a torn ACL and missed two games last year with an ankle injury. One could worry that due to his playing only five years of football and the amount of time missed in those seasons, he could always be a threat to be injured.
Chaisson also might fall to the beginning of the second round because teams want to see more of what Chaisson can do consistently. Pro Football Focus only gave Chaisson a grade of 72.7 which ranked 73rd out of 208 edge rushers in 2019, for instance, and a lot of this is because Chaisson just hasn’t fully learned how to use his athleticism enough to dominate.
Chaisson also has issues when offensive linemen can get their hands on him and muscle him around. Again, Chaisson can learn how to avoid these encounters and learn to use his speed and strength to maneuver around opposing linemen.
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The Seahawks, of course, are likely to trade down out of the first round. Seattle currently picks 27th and always trades back. If they can get a pick early in the second round there is a decent chance Chaisson will still be available. The Seahawks need edge rushers. K’Lavon Chaisson is potentially a great one. This seems almost like the perfect pairing.