Why 3 rising Seahawks players are standing out to Daniel Jeremiah

Nov 20, 2024, 1:18 PM | Updated: 1:39 pm

Brock Purdy of the 49ers runs against Seattle Seahawks LB Ernest Jones IV. (Lachlan Cunningham/Getty Images)

(Lachlan Cunningham/Getty Images)

Editor, Seattle Sports

The Seattle Seahawks are coming off their best win of the season, and as the team makes strides in its first year of a new era under head coach Mike Macdonald, some potential pillars of the future may be emerging.

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After Sunday’s 20-17 victory over the defending NFC champion San Francisco 49ers, NFL Network’s Daniel Jeremiah spotlighted three rising Seahawks players in the course of his weekly conversation with Seattle Sports’ Brock and Salk.

Let’s take a look at what Jeremiah had to say about linebacker Ernest Jones IV, right tackle Abraham Lucas and wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba.

The “vacuum cleaner” of the second level

The Seahawks traded for Jones last month from Tennessee, which came not even two months after the Titans made a trade with the Los Angeles Rams to get the 2021 third-round NFL Draft pick.

That has Jeremiah a bit confused, especially after Jones made a game-high 13 tackles and helped the Seattle defense hold the 49ers’ offense to just two touchdowns and a field goal on Sunday.

“We talked about it when that trade happened, but I don’t know what the deal is with that situation because he’s on three teams now and I’ve yet to see him play, like, bad football,” Jeremiah quipped. “He’s a good football player and I don’t know why he keeps getting moved, but he played really well in that game.”

Jones, who will turn 25 on Friday, has a couple of things going for him as an outside linebacker.

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“He’s got really good eyes, and he can run,” said Jeremiah, who hosts Move The Sticks with fellow former NFL pro scout Bucky Brooks. “You’re not going to get on the field if you can’t run at that position anymore. You just can’t. So he’s athletic, he can run, you’ll see him in coverage do some nice things. But he’s getting that first step, he’s getting out there quick because he’s seeing it, he’s sorting through things.

“He had a tackle on (49ers quarterback Brock) Purdy in space where Purdy takes off and goes, and a lot of times you kind of get one-on-one in space, they can be ugly tackles. They’re kind of falling to the ground, you grab a leg. Those are not easy. I don’t care if it’s a quarterback, running back, receiver in space. He just zeroes in on him, chests him up and puts him right on the ground. He’s just a really, really good tackler to go along with having really good eyes.”

Jones’ sure tackling in the middle seems to be having a positive effect on the Seahawks’ defense.

“It’s kind of like a vacuum cleaner there at the second level. If you can keep him clean and keep guys off of him, especially as he’s wearing that bulky arm brace – that’s the one maybe piece of kryptonite is he’s not going to be able to get off a lot of blocks. But they’ve done a pretty good job of keeping him clean and then just let him see and sort and fill and make tackles. Any bad defense, you can find a lack of trust at the center of it because you got guys trying to make plays that aren’t their plays to make. You jump out of gaps, you get cutback runs, you get huge plays, so I do think that’s an interesting word choice because trust is a big factor in any good defense.”

The value of a good right tackle

When Abraham Lucas has been healthy, he’s been solid. He just hasn’t been healthy all that much during his NFL career.

The 26-year-old product of Everett’s Archbishop Murphy High School and former WSU Cougars standout was impressive in 16 games as a rookie in 2022, but the former third-round pick was limited to six games last year due to a knee issue, and he didn’t make his 2024 debut until Sunday due to his recovery from offseason knee surgery.

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The good news is he looked like himself when in action against the Niners. And Lucas at his best is one of the better players at his position in the NFL, according to Jeremiah.

“It was better. It was physical,” Jeremiah said of what he saw from Seattle’s right tackle position against San Francisco. “And that’s something we’ve talked about on here during our visits about the lack of push, the lack of movement at the point of attack. I thought there was more of that in this game.

“The interesting thing on the Lucas side of things – this is going to sound bad, but I think there might only be six to eight good right tackles in the NFL out of 32 teams. Almost every team is having to hide and cover up and help their right tackle. It’s just there’s not enough guys to fill that spot, so the bar is not super high. If you can just get a functional right tackle, you’re ahead of the curve, you’re in the top half of the league. And I thought that just having him back in the lineup, he easily cleared that hurdle.”

Jeremiah joked a bit about how right tackle is one of the harder positions to fill in the NFL.

“It’s always funny to me as we start getting closer to the offseason and closer to my time with the draft, is that I’ll call a lot of GMs and buddies around the league. It’s pre-free agency and they’re doing some self-scouting and looking at their own roster, and I’m always like, ‘OK, so what are you shopping for? What are some of the needs you feel are glaring?’ And it’s like, ‘Ah, you know, we could really use a right tackle and a corner.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, well, so could the other 32 teams.'”

That means that if Lucas can stay healthy, the Seahawks should be ahead of most teams at the position.

Seattle Seahawks’ emerging receiver

Jaxon Smith-Njigba has looked more like a first-round talent in his last two games than at any other point so far in his two NFL seasons. He hauled in 10 receptions on 11 targets from quarterback Geno Smith for 110 yards against the 49ers, which came on the heels of a career-best 180 yards on seven catches against the Los Angeles Rams in Seattle’s previous game.

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In talking about JSN’s recent surge, Jeremiah pointed out that he’s showing he doesn’t need to be limited to one thing.

“You go back and watch all the targets, it’s outside, it’s inside, it’s working in the middle of the field, it’s a couple schemed-up plays,” Jeremiah said. “But then there’s separation, there’s catches in traffic. When you take it all in, it’s a complete performance and not something you could just kind of pigeonhole him as he’s just a slot only, he can only work on some of these little option routes and whip routes. He went a lot of different ways, and that’s where the ball was going, too.”

Are these past two games proof that JSN is the real deal?

“Geno’s very confident, very comfortable with him, and that’s been a trend that we see continuing. So I think it’s real,” Jeremiah said.

Catch NFL Network’s Daniel Jeremiah at 8:30 a.m. each Wednesday during Seattle Sports’ Brock and Salk. Listen to this week’s conversation in the podcast at this link or in the player near the top of this post.