4 seriously underappreciated players in Seattle Seahawks history

Sometimes it's amazing to look at a player's body of work in the National Football League and realize anew just how valuable they were to the franchise. Sometimes a player's steady play is their own undoing. They become so predictable in their production that they can actually become overlooked.

When it comes to the Seattle Seahawks franchise, there are a few players who have truly been overlooked and underappreciated over the ages. The team's history isn't nearly as extensive as some of the league's most notable franchises, but that doesn't mean that Seattle is not without some history of players glossed over all the same.

Let's look at four Seahawks who deserve far more credit from the franchise's early days to the present.

Doug Baldwin

It's hard to start any conversation about underrated Seahawks players with the current generation of fans without Doug Baldwin's name immediately being thrown out there for discussion—and rightfully so.

Baldwin is one of the best stories in the NFL from the last decade or more in terms of player grit and determination. He was a well-coached receiver under Jim Harbaugh at Stanford and was the team's leader in receiving yards and touchdowns, but he went undrafted in the 2011 NFL Draft due to being undersized (5'9") yet without the elite athleticism or top speed that generally accompanies smaller prospects at the position.

The Seahawks landed Baldwin as a rookie free agent and the dividends were immediate. In his first game, a Week 1 road loss to the San Francisco 49ers, Baldwin caught 4 passes for 83 yards and his first NFL touchdown. He would go on to catch 51 total passes for 788 receiving yards in his rookie campaign.

Over the next eight years, Baldwin would go on to catch a remarkable 493 catches for 6,563 receiving yards and 49 touchdowns. Baldwin would make the Pro Bowl in 2016-17 and also won Super Bowl XLVIII—a 43-8 drubbing of John Fox and the Denver Broncos.

Baldwin was not only a great player on the field but he was civic hero off of it. The entire NFL looked past him several times to start his career, but Baldwin had the last laugh in the end as the fourth leading receiver in Seahawks team history. Just ask Russ Wilson if Baldwin is underrated.