Ranking the five most important Seattle Seahawks heading into 2023

Number 3 - Seattle Seahawks defensive lineman Dre'Mont Jones

Dre'Mont Jones is by far the most money general manager John Schneider has ever spent on a free agent. Before Jones, Uchenna Nwosu in 2022 was but the difference in the contracts is about $7 million a season. It goes without saying, the Seahawks expect Jones to have a huge impact beginning in the 2023 season, but can he do that?

Jones didn't become a full-time starter with his former team, the Denver Broncos, until last year. In his first three years in the NFL, Jones started 16 of a possible 43 games. Did that say more about how Denver was using Jones or that they thought Jones wasn't trustworthy enough to expect him to give a ton of consistent production.

Jones did have a slight uptick in number of tackles last year. But he missed four games because of an injury, and he still played 100 more snaps than he did in 2021. His number of sacks didn't increase over his 2020 season (he had 6.5 sacks in 2020 and 2022), but he played 156 more snaps last year than he did two years ago. He also had fewer quarterback hits (10) than he did in fewer snaps in 2021 (11).

My point in all of that isn't to be a downer. It is simply to maybe put some pause on any Jones hype. 6.5 sacks is still solid, but it's not defense-altering. Jones might just be a cog in the overall machine, but not a transformative force. If that's the case, that's a lot to pay for a player who will have a cap number of $10,056,666 in 2023.