Jarran Reed does his best Michael Bennett in Seahawks victory over Panthers

When the Seattle Seahawks brought Jarran Reed back this offseason after he played elsewhere for a couple of seasons, most may have assumed that the plan was to play him at one defensive tackle/end spot opposite fellow free agent acquisition Dre'Mont Jones. But Seattle had different plans. Jarran Reed would be the nose guard.

This seemed somewhat ridiculous as Reed at never played nose before and over the last couple of years he had had diminishing results and wasn't overly great against the run. And that's one thing Seattle needed to fix over 2022: Run defense. But so far through three weeks, the Seahawks run defense is much better than last year and Reed, instead of Jones, is playing like the guy who should have gotten a massive contract.

Reed did a bit of everything for Seattle against the Carolina Panthers. His stat line is crazt. Reed was in on 8 tackles, had 1.5 sacks, a tackle for loss, 3 quarterback hits, and a pass defended. The pass defended was a pass deflection at the line of scrimmage, so don't panic. Ken Norton has not returned as Seattle's defensive coordinator as is dropping defensive linemen into coverage. We shouldn't have to go through that mess again.

Jarran Reed shows why Seattle Seahawks were correct to bring him back

But Reed looked a lot like former Seahawks great Michael Bennett in Week 3. Reed lined up inside and outside at times. He also played his best in the second half and got a ton of interior pressure. Basically, just like Michael Bennett did. But since this was Seattle's 10th-anniversary game to celebrate the team winning the Super Bowl for the 2013 season, Reed threw out an honor to Bennett as Reed did a belly dance after a sack. Pretty? No, but it was beautiful Seahawks football.

We should probably be a little worried about Dre'Mont Jones, though. Through three games he hasn't done much. Instead of Reed helping him, Reed needs Jones' help. Reed has 6 quarterback hits in 2023, for instance, while Jones has 1.

Reed said one thing that got him stoked to play against the Panthers was a pre-game speech by Red Bryant. Bryant played on the 2013 Super Bowl team.

Now we just need to hope that Reed (and Jones) can be good every game the rest of the season. The schedule gets rougher near the end of the year so every win now helps for Seattle to try to make another postseason run.

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