With Seattle Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald’s system, some players just seem to understand it better than others. Even if a player has not been a star elsewhere, or at least not yet with Seattle, they might suddenly become very good. This is especially true once they have a chance to play.
Seattle has also suffered a bunch of injuries on defense this season. Pro Bowlers Julian Love and Devon Witherspoon have missed multiple games, Riq Woolen missed Week 6 and half of Week 5, and that’s just in the secondary. Except for Week 5’s meltdown, the replacements have done pretty well.
One unsung veteran has not only been good in a pinch, but might have shown enough to be a good fit for Seattle for a few more years. After a terrible Week 1, safety Ty Okada has proven to be quite good with extra reps, and this was definitely the case in Week 6 against the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Ty Okada surprisingly playing very well for the Seattle Seahawks
To be fair, even while the rest of the defense was falling apart in Week 5 against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Okada was pretty solid. He was targeted four times, but three of those went for incompletions. Quarterback Baker Mayfield only threw four incompletions in the entire game. The safety also had three run stuffs.
Against the Jags, Okada was targeted three times and allowed just one completion for 17 yards. In the last two games combined, he has allowed only 41 yards receiving and just 10 yards after the catch. If a receiver does catch the ball against Okada, they are almost immediately tackled.
One of the best parts about Okada’s game, while he has taken Julian Love’s reps at free safety, is that he has been versatile. He’s lined up in the deep part of the field a bunch, as free safeties do, but he has also moved into the box 34 times in two games. This allows him to help in run support even more.
It is Okada’s versatility that could be the key to potentially replacing strong safety Coby Bryant. Bryant should be a starter currently, and he’s been good since midway through last season, but he is a free agent next offseason and was in no rush to sign an extension with the Seahawks.Depending on how much Bryant wants, general manager John Schneider might decide to move on and see if Okada can be Love’s safety partner. If nothing else, Ty Okada has shown himself to be a long-term fixture for the Seattle Seahawks.
