The Seattle Seahawks look very little like the team Pete Carroll was forced to leave after the 2023 season. General manager John Schneider remains, but stalwarts like Tyler Lockett, DK Metcalf, Bobby Wagner, and Geno Smith are gone. The team has been better without them.
Among the players to have been released, traded, or simply not re-signed is linebacker Jordyn Brooks. Brooks was expected to be the heir apparent to the greatness of Wagner, and he was solid for Seattle for a while. But he never completely proved he was worthy of being a first-round draft pick, which he was in 2020.
Brooks could tackle well, but did not offer the kind of versatility that would have fit in head coach Mike Macdonald's system. The linebacker struggled in coverage, didn't consistently offer much in terms of pass rush, and he was regressing in terms of his tackling ability.
Former Seattle Seahawks linebacker Jordyn Brooks has become a star with the Miami Dolphins
He unfortunately saved his worst season with the Seahawks until his last. In 2023, he whiffed on 16.5 percent of his tackle attempts (an awful amount for an inside linebacker), which led to an inefficiency in run support, and he had 50 fewer tackles than in 2022.
Brooks, though, found a new home with the Miami Dolphins, the team he signed with in free agency ahead of the 2024 season. In the last two seasons, he has played like the kind of player the Seahawks hoped they were getting in the 2020 first round.
He has been elite in run defense, set a career-high in quarterback pressures with 20 in 2024, and is trending toward that many in 2025. This year has missed an extraordinarily low 3.4 percent of his tackle attempts. He also currently leads the NFL in overall tackles through Week 14 with 142.
His 10 tackles for loss are just one behind his career-high of 11, which he set in his first season with the Dolphins, so he will likely break that this year. Jordyn Brooks has also been key to a Miami defense that has been better than expected, and one that has helped the Dolphins unexpectedly win four games in a row heading into Week 15.
The only drawback for the linebacker is that he is 28 years old and will be nearly 30 when he next hits free agency. That is the age at which teams tend to pay a player less. Meanwhile, Brooks is relatively underpaid, currently making an average of $8.75 million. Of all the former Seattle Seahawks in the NFL, Brooks might be the one most outplaying his contract.