Has WR DK Metcalf emerged as the Seahawks’ second-best player?
Dec 1, 2020, 9:12 AM | Updated: 10:13 am
Seahawks WR DK Metcalf had 177 yards against the Eagles in Week 12. (Getty)
(Getty)
The Seahawks’ best player is quarterback Russell Wilson, and that has been the case in Seattle for a number of years now.
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And for a while now, perennial All-Pro middle linebacker Bobby Wagner has been the easy choice for the team’s second-best player. But now, a second-year player is making a very strong case for that title, especially after a dominant performance on Monday Night Football against the Philadelphia Eagles.
DK Metcalf, who had 900 receiving yards as a rookie in 2019, caught 10 passes for 177 yards against the Eagles, who had no answer for the emerging star. He has now surpassed the 1,000-yard mark for the first time in his career and has a great chance of breaking Hall of Famer Steve Largent’s franchise record for receiving yards in a single season of 1,287 he set in 1985. Metcalf has 1,039 with five games remaining.
Has Metcalf shown enough to claim the title of the Seahawks’ second-best player, though? Former NFL quarterback Brock Huard thinks so.
“In 2020? Yes he is. In 2020, he is,” he told 710 ESPN Seattle’s Danny and Gallant Tuesday morning. “In 2020, he is the leading receiver when it comes to yards in this league. He is the one that teams scheme and plan for.”
Huard said opposing teams are not nearly as worried about Wagner as they are about Metcalf. He also said safety Jamal Adams has more of an argument for being the second-best player on the Seahawks than Wagner does.
“They’re not scheming for Bobby Wagner,” he said. “They do a little bit for Jamal a little bit around the line of scrimmage, and you’ve got to account for him in protection and he is fantastic at getting to the quarterback and understanding angles and sniffing out run plays. And he’s their best linebacker – I’d say Jamal Adams is their best linebacker right now. When he plays around the line of scrimmage, he is awesome.”
Adams leads the Seahawks with 6.5 sacks in seven games after adding a sack against the Eagles on Monday. Even with Adams’ elite play, Huard thinks Metcalf is absolutely the Seahawks’ second-best player through 11 games in 2020, and it’s clear he is given how opponents plan for him.
“That is the level that he is playing at, that’s what the production speaks to and that is frankly when teams are planning, that says (the most to me) that your peers in this league are saying we’ve got to put our best on this guy,” he said. “Like he is a problem and he can take this game over and if we just play zones and he catches it and runs, he is going to make game-changing plays.”
Huard said the Rams putting star cornerback Jalen Ramsey, who locked down Metcalf in Week 10, on the wide receiver spoke volumes about the way the league views Metcalf. The Eagles tried something similar with Darius Slay, who Metcalf regularly torched on the way to his 177 yards. Metcalf, not Tyler Lockett, has regularly been lined up against opposing team’s top cornerbacks.
“Darius Slay can play, but he couldn’t keep up with DK,” Huard said. “So that is the level of respect that he is commanding each and every week of the opposing defense and the opposing coordinator (for them to say), ‘Hey man, we’ve got to take this guy away.'”
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