The Seattle Seahawks have the league's best defense, and they proved it by shutting down the Kansas City Chiefs' high-powered offense. Yes, it takes 70 players as one to win, but one key player stands out for Seattle. Nick Emmanowri is The Problem no other team can solve.
The Seahawks defense, better known as the Dark Side, is clearly the NFL's best. They're allowing just 4.0 yards per play - 3.99, if you wanna get technical about it, and yes, I do - while the second-place Vikings allow 4.46 yards per play. I could have just rounded it off to make Seattle look better, but they don't need that edge. By the way, the Niners and Rams are third and fourth - tough division, right?
Seattle's defense is filled with players who should be All-Pros, or at least Pro Bowlers. I'm not even counting last year's Defensive Player of the Year, Jaxon Smith-Njigba. The league office must have assigned engraving duties to an AI agent. Ernest Jones IV, Leonard Williams, Devon Witherspoon, Julian Love - they're all cornerstones for the defense. But no one is as valuable as Nick Emmanwori.
Need someone to cover a guy with blazing 4.21 speed? The Seahawks have the answer. The opposing quarterback is a shifty runner who always evades the pass rush? Seattle has the man to bring him down. A powerful, darting tailback who sheds tacklers and flies into the secondary? No worries, he's dropped in his tracks. Well, maybe one wori - as in, Emmanwori.
Name one other player in the league who can keep up with speed merchant Xavier Worthy, corral the hyper-aware Patrick Mahomes, and corral the evasive slasher, Kenneth Walker. Okay, maybe it's Devon Witherspoon, but as hard as he hits, he doesn't bring the hammer like Emmanwori. There is no other player with Emmanwori's tools.
As his teammates have all said, his impact on the game doesn't even begin to show in the stats. Andy Reid sees it, and he didn't even have to name Emmanwori when he praised Seattle's defense. To his credit, Reid said this before the Seahawks shut his team down. Papa Smurf is a smart guy and one of the all-time great coaches.
Mike Macdonald shows every indication of heading down that path of the greats, too. Yes, I know, it's far too early for that kind of talk. But no other coach sees every atom of potential in their players as well as Macdonald. In Emmanwori, he has unleashed the ultimate problem that no team can solve.
This article was originally published on www.12thmanrising.com as NFL teams have a Nick Emmanwori problem they can't seem to solve .
