Big Ray: Why Seahawks’ Charles Cross is playing like one of NFL’s best OTs

Sep 19, 2024, 10:46 AM

Charles Cross of the Seattle Seahawks after an NFL game. (Steph Chambers/Getty Images)

(Steph Chambers/Getty Images)

Seattle Sports

The Seattle Seahawks’ offensive line features some of the team’s biggest questions marks, but it also features one of their best players from the opening two weeks of the season.

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After two solid campaigns to start his career, former first-round pick Charles Cross is showing signs that he’s making the leap from good to great. The third-year pro is the highest-rated offensive tackle in the NFL through two weeks, per Pro Football Focus.

How has Cross taken what’s looking like a big step forward this season? Seahawks Radio Network analyst and former NFL offensive lineman Ray Roberts shared what he’s seen with Seattle Sports’ Brock and Salk.

Area of improvement

Cross excelled more as a pass protector during his first two pro seasons. He’s still doing well in that aspect with zero pressures allowed on 87 pass-blocking snaps this year, which makes him the only Seahawks starting O-lineman not to allow a pressure this year.

But his greatest strength thus far has come as a run blocker. Cross sports the league’s top run-blocking grade for tackles at 90.7. That will be an incredibly tough number to sustain for 17 games, but even a sizeable drop-off would still have Cross in line to post his best career run-blocking grade.

“At some point, you just reach the point of your career where you’re going to either take the step or you just going to kind of remain muddled in the water, and he seems to have taken the step,” Roberts said. “Not only just his pass blocking, but his run blocking has taken a tremendous leap. … When I scouted his film in college, he just seemed like a dude in the run game that just wanted to make sure he was in the right spot and just kind of walk dudes off, and then that’s kind of how his NFL career was.

“Then all of a sudden this year, he’s putting dudes on their back. So, it’s a change in his mentality, but I think that’s a reflection of how he’s been coached.”

A credit to coaching

Cross has a new offensive line coach this season in Scott Huff, who previously held the same position with the UW Huskies. Huff was highly regarded for his work on Montlake and known for developing strong relationships, which was evident in the success UW had in recruiting and keeping offensive linemen during his seven-season tenure. That aspect was part of the reason why former UW coach Kalen DeBoer decided to keep Huff on his staff when he took over the Huskies progra before the 2022 season.

Huff also excelled at developing talent during his time as a college coach. The 2023 Huskies won the Joe Moore Award, which is given annually to the nation’s top offensive line, and Huff’s O-line was also a semifinalist for the award in 2016 when he coached at Boise State. In his first season at UW in 2017, offensive tackle Kaleb McGary won the Morris Trophy as the Pac-12’s top offensive lineman. Tackle Troy Fautanu won the Morris Trophy under Huff’s tutelage last year, and UW’s group in the trenches produced at least one first-team All-Pac-12 player in each season during his tenure. In total, five of Huff’s players at UW became NFL draft picks, including first-rounders McGary and Fautanu.

Roberts credited Huff for some of the improvement Cross has made for the Seahawks this season.

“I really do think that the coaching makes a difference,” Roberts said. “The whole offseason, just watching how Huff was preparing him and challenging him in practice to be more violent with his hands, to be more active with his feet, to play in a more powerful position. So he’s kind of gotten lower in his stance to start out with, narrowed his stance a little bit.”

Roberts used an example from his own playing career to explain how much of a difference a coach could make. When Roberts was in his second year with Seattle in 1993, Howard Mudd took over as the team’s offensive line coach.

“He really challenged me to take care of the little things,” Roberts explained. “I was a really good athlete – quick feet, long arms, all this other kind of stuff – but my technique was terrible. So every single day I would go to Kirkland and just the two of us would be on the field running through plays. … That became my trademark – my attention to the technique – and I think that’s when my career took off. I think there’s no difference for Charles in that.”

Listen to the full conversation at this link or in the audio player near the top of this story. Tune in to Brock and Salk weekdays from 6-10 a.m. or find the podcast on the Seattle Sports app.