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Let’s start with the finish:That was the consensus on Jarran Reed heading into the 2016 NFL Draft. Reed was seen as an elite run-stopper but in a passing league that cares not that much about run defense Womens Shaquill Griffin Jersey , the type of player that Reed was projected as is simply not a first round value. One could point to Brandon Williams of the Baltimore Ravens as an example of a great defensive tackle with 5.5 career sacks in six seasons.Williams is valuable to the Ravens, but he’s also 17th in APY for defensive tackles and has never made a Pro Bowl. He’s beloved in Baltimore but won’t be confused with Aaron Donald or Geno Atkins on a national level, and I think that’s warranted, because it’s not like Donald and Atkins don’t also play run defense. A three-down defensive tackle with a significant pass rush game is a top-10 pick and few people saw that third down coming for Reed because it never happened in his two years at Alabama.The time for Reed to show potential as a top-10 pick would have had to happen going into his final year of college, and since that never happened, Reed slipped out of the first round. Though some thought that was a huge mistake.WalterFootball did think he should be a top-25 pick. Mike Mayock had Reed ranked third at his position, behind only DeForest Buckner and Sheldon Rankins. Todd McShay noted that Reed improved in pass rush during his time at Alabama, registering eight QB hurries in his senior season.Reed was also a standout at the Senior Bowl:At the end of the first round, the Seattle Seahawks ended up taking Germain Ifedi, having traded down from 26 to 31 with the Denver Broncos, who wanted Paxton Lynch. In moving down, the Seahawks added a third rounder (Nick Vannett), but in the four picks between Lynch and Ifedi, an unlikely three defensive tackles went off the board: Kenny Clark, Robert Nkemdiche, and Vernon Butler.Defensive tackle was a major need for Seattle — as it really has been since Pete Carroll and John Schneider arrived in 2010 — specifically one who has a pass rush aspect to his game. Did the Seahawks F up by moving down four spots and losing out on three defensive tackles, including Nkemdiche, who many considered a top-10 talent with character concerns? I saw one place list him with 26 QB pressures in his final season at Ole Miss, a much higher number than eight. Clark had 11 TFL and six sacks in his last season at UCLA. Butler was also seen to have a high ceiling as a pass rusher.Instead, the Seahawks wound up with Ifedi, a choice that confused and upset many Seattle fans. No first round defensive tackles were coming to this defense.As the second round transpired, Chris Jones went to the Kansas City Chiefs at pick 37. Jones has been a rather fantastic interior pass rusher in his NFL career. Then Austin Johnson went to the Tennessee Titans at pick 43. Then the final insult as Reed’s own defensive tackle teammate A’Shawn Robinson went off the board to the Detroit Lions at pick 46. Not only had eight defensive tackles gotten drafted before him, but Reed was the very last pro prospect left in the green room at the event.Which hurts even more given that Reed’s suit game was on point.Photo by Kena Krutsinger/Getty ImagesFinally, Seattle saw their opportunity.Having acquired an additional third rounder already, the Seahawks felt even more comfortable making a decision to move up for the defensive tackle that they actually coveted. Schneider used a fourth round pick to move up from 56 to 49 to select Reed; afterwards, Schneider admitted that they contemplated taking Reed at pick 31 instead of Ifedi. Seahawks area scout Jim Nagy called Reed the “alpha dog” of a national championship defense at Alabama. Mike Bar wrote here at Field Gulls that Reed was the steal of the draft and that his ceiling was perhaps not Michael Brockers or Eddie Goldman, to whom he was often compared, but Kawann Short of the Carolina Panthers, a player who has annoyed and disrupted the Seahawks all too many times.Short and Reed are both 6’3. Both weighed around 300 lbs at the time of the draft. Short has longer arms, Reed has bigger hands. Short is maybe a little faster. Reed maybe jumps a little higher and farther. Short was voted a captain at Purdue, so he was also seen as one of the team’s leaders. And that’s something Carroll predicted would happen for Reed earlier this year.Reed has responded with a six-game start to this season that rivals and compares favorably to the third year of Short, when he recorded 11 sacks and made the Pro Bowl, helping the Panthers go 15-1 and win the NFC, including a 31-24 win over Seattle in the playoffs. On the second offensive play of the game for the Seahawks, Kawann Short pressures Russell Wilson into throwing a pick-six to Luke Kuechly. On Seattle’s sixth offensive play, Short sacks Wilson for a loss of 10. The Seahawks went down 31-0 and even though they nearly made the comeback, the message was as clear as ever: Not only does Seattle need to stop Short, they need to find Short. A few months later Justin Britt Jersey Green , they drafted Reed.Not a coincidence, and he kinda looks the part, doesn’t he? After just three sacks in his first two seasons, Reed is on fire.Reed had five tackles and a QB hit in Week 1. He had two sacks in Week 3. He had a sack and two TFL in Week 4. He had six tackles in Week 5. He had five tackles and a sack in Week 6. Here are your leaders in sacks by a defensive tackle this season:Geno Atkins, 6DeForest Buckner, 4.5Reed, Aaron Donald, Fletcher Cox, 4How’s that for company? Since Week 3, no defensive tackle has more sacks than Reed. And this guy was only supposed to be the best run-stopper in the 2016 draft. What if instead he’s also as good of a pass rusher as Buckner, the seventh overall pick? Reed has more sacks in the last four games than he had in his first two seasons. He has matched his career-high in TFL. He’s halfway to a new career-high in QB hits with 10 games to go. Short had five sacks in his first two seasons and then 11 in year three. Last April, Short signed an $80 million extension.What’s next for Reed, who will be entering the final year of his deal in 2019? And who doesn’t have a fifth-year option because for better or worse, he was not a first round pick. The Seahawks considered taking him there and they didn’t. It allowed them to get a right tackle who is also enjoying a breakout season, but it may cost them a slightly cheaper fifth season — but it has also perhaps gotten them the best defensive tackle Carroll has ever had in Seattle.Last in the green room in 2016. First to the quarterback in 2018. Back on Wednesday I posted an article pondering what the 2019 season would look like for the Seattle Seahawks if Russell Wilson were not at the helm, and the results were pretty much in line with..."Back on Wednesday I posted an article pondering what the 2019 season would look like for the Seattle Seahawks if Russell Wilson were not at the helm, and the results were pretty much in line with what I expected. Field Gulls readers who responded to the poll had a slightly more optimistic outlook for a season played without Wilson at the helm, but it is still a stretch by any measure to state that fans believe things would be fine even without Wilson for 2019. In any case, here is how Field Gulls readers responded to the poll (as of Saturday morning Pacific Time; the poll will continue for several more days though it’s likely the majority of voters who will vote have already done so). So, 88% of respondents felt that the Seahawks are a .500 or worse team without Wilson in 2019, which was slightly better than how those who responded to the poll on Twitter felt the team would finish in such a situation. Here are the final results of the Twitter poll just as a reminder. What these results lead me to question is how much meaning do Pete Carroll and his coaching skill carry for the team? If he is such a great defensive coach, and was in charge of creating the first defense in NFL history that was the number one scoring defense for four seasons in a row, shouldn’t a team he coaches be better than 6-10 in the absence of the franchise quarterback? In the two seasons prior to Wilson’s arrival, Carroll managed more than six wins in each individual campaign. Further, he now has some of the key components of his rebuilt defense reaching the point in their careers where they should start to blossom and develop into potential stars. The upcoming 2019 season is set to be the third season of starting for cornerback Shaquill Griffin and the second season as a starter for his counterpart on the flip side of the defense, Tre Flowers. Add in defensive end Frank Clark and Jarran Reed truly breaking out in 2018, Quinton Jefferson and Branden Jackson showing their own development, and the potential for a deep corps of linebackers in Bobby Wagner, K.J. Wright and Mychal Kendricks, and there at least appears to be a recipe for much of the defense to potentially be very good. And very good would be an improvement for the Seahawks defenses of the past couple of seasons, as both the 2017 and 2018 versions of the defense failed to crack the top ten. Injuries and youth obviously played a very large part of both of those results, but what is the expectation for the Seattle defense in 2019? Will they return to form as a top flight defense? Will they continue to to perform as a middling defense as they miss the star players who have been lost to age, injury and free agency in recent years? Or will they, for some reason or another, see a decline in performance in a below average defense? During his nine seasons in the Northwest Carroll has only seen one of his defenses finish in the bottom half of the league in scoring, and that was during his first year with the Hawks in 2010. Thus, today’s question for fans is the following: